


Crooked Rhyme

by edy



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Acquired Amusia, Assault, Crisis of Faith, Deal with a Devil, Depression, Established Relationship, Lack of Communication, M/M, Major Character Injury, Recovery, Religious Guilt, Trench Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:15:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25939522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edy/pseuds/edy
Summary: He is an infant, birthed from trauma, and soon, he won't remember this pain.
Relationships: Josh Dun/Tyler Joseph
Comments: 24
Kudos: 40





	Crooked Rhyme

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nolightss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nolightss/gifts).



> inspiration: "the devil went down to georgia," "square hammer" by ghost, and "all this and heaven too" by florence + the machine
> 
> -
> 
> it's been a little while
> 
> i've been writing this fic on and off for the past two years. i never thought it would see the light of day, but Here We Are
> 
> i aimed to post this fic for the joshler big bang we had back in summer 2019. i thought the big bang would be a good deadline for me. unfortunately, that didn't happen. since my MFA thesis was a novel, i tried to balance writing _that_ with writing this fic. it eventually made me too anxious, and i had to put this fic on hold in order to prioritize my schoolwork
> 
> and that brings me here. i finished my novel. i finished my degree, and… i finally finished this fic
> 
> i'm not sure if this is a comeback. we'll see how i feel later
> 
> i hope you enjoy this fic <3
> 
> the biggest of thanks goes to my darling ezra. you have helped me far more than you could ever know. thank you for accepting me as i am. thank you for not trying to change me. thank you for always being there for me and always loving me (and thank you for introducing me to ghost)
> 
> this wouldn't be possible without you

They were wedding planning that morning, palms to the kitchen island as they leaned over thick, fraying catalogues with the steam from their coffee mugs swimming around their faces.

"Dirt water," Josh said, when he poked the buttons on the coffee machine, a big grin on his face, a scrunched-up nose. Tyler punched him in the arm, mumbled something about making him a cup with "extra dirt," and Josh happily obliged.

Even if Tyler wasn't a huge fan of coffee, he still sipped it, still tucked in close to Josh's side, and still kissed the nip of cream and sugar from his lips at every offering. This morning was no different. Tyler kissed Josh, Josh kissed Tyler, and they held on to each other and whispered of colors and suit styles—and the occasional dress—they thought the other would look best in for their wedding day.

They were thinking about a spring wedding, summer at the latest; it depended on their schedules. Along with the catalogues, they had paper copies of tour schedules strung around the table and countertops.

"We're going to make this work," Josh told Tyler, into his ear, his shoulder, his neck. "We will."

"We will," Tyler agreed.

On the day two new songs and a music video dropped to officially start the _Trench_ era, Tyler and Josh also announced their engagement through a photoshoot, complete in their Bandito uniforms and dozens upon dozens of yellow flowers. Their fans called them idiots, but they didn't care.

It was a natural progression. It was an inevitability.

They were wedding planning that morning, palms to bare skin beneath t-shirts as they leaned into each other and began to ignore the thick, fraying catalogues and their lukewarm coffee.

"Can't wait to make you _Mr. Pilot_ ," Josh murmured, and Tyler beamed and uttered, "Oh, Mr. Pilot, how do you do? Teach me all the ways I can love you."

*

They were wedding planning that morning, so naturally, when Tyler opens his eyes and turns to look at Josh, he says, "I think we should wear matching pink ties."

 _Of course_ , Tyler expects Josh to tell him, _I think we should match, but maybe we can have a different color?_ He'd have a cautious tone, since it's late at night, and he knows the show that evening exhausted both Tyler and himself. He'd be cautious, yes, but his face would be soft, his eyes bright. He'd even whisper, _Shouldn't you be sleeping right now?_ To which Tyler would whisper right back, _I_ am _sleeping._

But Josh doesn't speak such things to him. Next to him, Josh is slowly rising onto his elbow, then his hip, his thigh. The bed frame doesn't creak as it usually does; the lack of noise brings Tyler's eyes down to the bed sheets—white—and the blankets—also white. Josh must have changed them before Tyler climbed onto the tour bus, wanted him to have a clean bed to fall into after his shower. That's it. It even smells clean, like nose plugs dipped in antiseptic are shoved deep into his nostrils. A heavy pressure leaks into his nose, the bridge of it, and further back—his brain, maybe.

He looks at Josh.

Oily hair stuffed under a baseball cap, dark circles under his eyes, lips chewed to bits and pieces—dried blood within the cracks—Josh wears sweatpants and a thin jacket zipped all the way up to his chin. And those eyes of his stare at Tyler, growing wide, wide, wider, like he can't believe what he's hearing, like he can't fathom the thought they would ever _dare_ wear matching pink ties for their wedding.

"It doesn't have to be pink," Tyler says, then, and notes the way Josh's lips tremble.

"Tyler," Josh mutters, cracked voice, cracking his lips, and he presses those lips to Tyler's forehead before easing himself from the bed, before easing himself from the room—the room—the room—

Four white walls trap Tyler. Curtains shield big, overwhelming windows to his right. Only a brief moment of relief washes over Tyler as he begins to wonder if it's daytime, nighttime. He had been sleeping before he opened his eyes. It must be sometime during the night.

He ignores the border of light, reasons it as the moon.

In the corner of the room, people chatter—a TV— _Say Yes to the Dress_. Of course—that's how he got to thinking of matching pink ties. It's almost laughable, him lying here having fallen asleep watching a television program like this until he remembers they don't have a TV on their tour bus.

He tries to sit up, tries to speak, but it hurts to even breathe.

Josh returns. A woman follows him—scrubs—blue—she approaches Tyler and says, "Hi there. Hey." It's cheerful, her eyes huge and resembling two crystal balls as she inspects him, touches him—first on his shoulder, then his jaw. To Josh, over her shoulder, she says, "He's having a panic attack," and Josh says, "Duh."

Tyler closes his eyes.

She says, "Did he say anything when he woke up?"

Josh sniffs, hard. "I couldn't understand him."

As he's lying there in this unfamiliar bed with unfamiliar sheets and unfamiliar blankets, Tyler realizes he must be dreaming. His body feels heavy and light at the same time, hurting and at peace. And his eyes, his tear ducts—when he cries, nothing comes out.

"Hey," he says, and the woman—scrubs—a nurse—yes—she's still touching his jaw and telling him, "Just breathe, okay? Deep breath in… and… let it out."

He breathes in. He breathes out.

She smiles. "There you go."

She says, "Do you know your name?"

And Tyler nods because his name is Tyler, but when he tries to disclose that to her, no words of noble intelligence slip from his tongue. He hears it now. He listens to himself talk—he needs to do that more often—and he looks at Josh as he vomits nothing of meaning. Standing by the bed, Josh has his hands to his mouth, his nails between his teeth, chewing and chewing and gnawing.

"Tomorrow," the probably-nurse assesses. "He'll be stronger tomorrow. I'll give him another dose of morphine to help him sleep. We can't have him exerting himself."

"How many ribs did he break again?" asks Josh—quiet, so quiet.

"Three—but remember, he also broke—"

"Yeah," Josh says. "Yeah."

He hides his face in his hands.

Tears can finally leave Tyler's tear ducts. As soon as he feels the hot tears roll down his cheeks, he drifts to sleep and breathes in, breathes out.

He breathes in. He breathes out.

*

If he dreams any, he doesn't remember once he wakes. His body is heavier today, like there's a weight on his chest, on his head—like he's underwater. He glances around the room, the closed curtains, the slow beeping of his heart monitor. Tyler focuses on that, watches it bounce up, bounce up, bounce up.

Josh is watching it, too. He's in a chair now, criss-cross applesauce and drinking from a Styrofoam cup with coffee inside, a black lid on top. He looks a little better than the last time Tyler opened his eyes—he's showered, at least, hair all dark curls flying everywhere. He's wearing a hoodie—Tyler's hoodie, maybe, gray, with the strings tied in a bow.

Slowly, Tyler attempts to roll onto his side. Within seconds, Josh is on him, coffee cup on the end table, his hands on each side of Tyler's face. "Tyler," he whispers. "Tyler, are you there?"

This is slow, too, Tyler nodding his head. Shallow, Tyler parts his lips, says, "Y-yeah, I'm here," and raises his hands to mirror Josh's own. It isn't the same, not really. Tyler's right arm is wrapped in a plaster cast, and the fingers of his left hand can't curl all the way around the curve of Josh's cheek. But still, Tyler touches Josh, holds him, and Josh blinks away the threat of tears dancing on his waterlines.

"Do you remember what happened?" Josh asks. He understood Tyler; Tyler must have spoken coherently.

"I heard I b-broke three ribs," Tyler whispers. His fingers twitch against Josh's cheeks, all ten of them, all against his will. "B-but I think I broke my arm, too."

A smile pulls at Josh's lips. "Oh, yeah—yeah, babe? What made you think that?" He slides his hands down Tyler's face, to his shoulders. Josh squeezes once, then twice more. The pressure there is comfortable, needed, and Tyler drops his hands to revel in that pressure. His body needs a massage, a rub-down with peppermint lotion. Josh reads his mind, telling him, "When you come home, I'll pamper you so good."

Home. _Home_. It's an abstract concept to Tyler when he isn't even sure what state they're in right now, what city, what hospital—Tyler considers the possibility of them being in purgatory, floating somewhere only they know in this detached room, just the two of them and all of his broken bones.

"Josh," Tyler says, then, and it's a little deeper because it gets caught in his throat. He stares at Josh, and he raises his hands to touch Josh's face again, and he asks him, "When am I going home?"

And again, Josh says, "Do you remember what happened?"

And Tyler says, "No." It's the right answer. It's the wrong answer.

Josh sits on the edge of the bed, hugging his legs to his chest. He presses his cheek to his knees and twitches his face in a funny way—uncontrollable, almost, like he doesn't know what he's supposed to do, so he's doing it all. "You broke your ribs… your arm"—he jerks his shoulder back, gesturing—"you broke your knee, too. Just, _Tyler_ —" Whipping the sleeves of his hoodie in the space in front of him, Josh makes sure his hands are covered in the gray fabric before dabbing his eyes. It all turns charcoal—the hoodie, his eyes.

"I thought you _died_. We all did." Josh sucks in a breath, his chin quivering. "No, you _did_ die. DOA, they told me. _Dead on arrival_. But… but you're _here_ now. You're here, and you _didn't_ die."

Tyler listens to his heart bounce up and up and up.

"You broke your skull," Josh says, hugging his legs again, dropping his chin to his knees so hard his teeth clack together, "in, like, a few places. They did surgery on you to fix it. They _said_ they fixed it."

Tyler breathes in, breathes out.

"You fell." Josh's voice is so far away. _Josh_ is so far away. "You fell, and you died, but you aren't dead anymore."

*

In his dreams, he is a movie director. He films a documentary of his demise, angling the camera to his face as he captures the moment he had fallen.

In his dreams, he listens to his bones crack, his head hit the floor. He listens to himself spitting up blood, gurgling, gasping for air, suffocating—drowning.

In his dreams, he sees his face busted and purple, bloody from where he lay on the venue floor, spread-eagled and lost.

He knows there are photos of him, videos. He knows he can see the actual damage and not rely on his imagination to detail the events of his fall.

But he doesn't. He doesn't have to do that; he can feel the way his face is swollen and scabbed, can feel how his body refuses to move, can feel how—sometimes—his lungs struggle to handle an inhale.

He is an infant, birthed from trauma, and soon, he won't remember this pain.

*

And yet, once—once, Tyler turns to Josh sitting next to him in that stiff, off-white upholstered chair and asks, "When did I fall? It wasn't… it wasn't 'Car Radio.'"

"No," Josh says. "It wasn't 'Car Radio.'"

Josh picks at the fabric stretched over the chair, his nails blunt and doing no damage. Finally, he says, "'Pet Cheetah.'"

Tyler drags his eyes down to the legs of that chair. Faded flowers twirl around so fast it makes him dizzy. "Oh."

"You dropped the microphone… and you tried to catch it…"

"Did I kill anyone?"

Josh shakes his head. "No. No. Just a few sprains, dislocations. They all… they all pretty much _scattered_. We're paying for their hospital bills and everything, though, y'know… It's the least we could do."

"I think they wanted to kill me. Some of them."

Josh is back to scratching the chair, faster now—a dog digging a hole. His lips are bitten to shreds, his mouth opening and closing before words are able to come out. When they come out, they're slow and measured—"What makes you say that?"

Tyler closes his eyes. He feels Josh's lips on his forehead, trembling and wet.

*

He doesn't know how much time has passed. Josh doesn't change his clothes a lot. He sleeps in the same hoodie, the same pair of sweatpants. Sometimes, he changes. Tonight, he crawls into the bed, wearing Tyler's Nintendo hoodie and forgoing his baseball cap. Tyler rests his cheek against the top of Josh's head and falls asleep to the sound of Josh's snores.

*

He wakes crying, to Josh gathering him into the fabric of his sweatshirt, to Josh asking so softly and so slowly, "What's wrong?" He rubs Tyler's back, Tyler's shoulders. "Did you have a bad dream?"

Tyler touches Josh's arm. His fingers pull, tug the sleeve. He does it again. He does it again. "I'm scared," he says. "I'm scared that there's something wrong with my brain."

The sun dares to peek through the slit in the curtains. It rests at the foot of the bed—a yellow thread. Tyler stares at it, watches it rise when Josh stretches out his legs beneath it. Josh is quiet. Josh is still rubbing Tyler's back.

"You're having tests today. We'll find out if there's anything wrong, and then we'll go on from there."

He closes his eyes on those yellow lines along the stiff, white blankets.

Josh's arms curl tighter around him.

Tyler's skull was fractured, needed surgery to repair it. It's likely he has brain damage; how could he not?

What if his brain is bleeding now, and he only has a week left to live? Would Josh want to finalize a wedding date? Would they try to go all out, or would they run hand in hand to a courthouse in Ohio?

_They can wear matching pink ties._

Even after all this time, Tyler hasn't decided if he wants to take Josh's last name, if he wants to hyphenate, if _Josh_ wants to take _his_ last name. Tyler has had years to think about this, really. He's thought about being with Josh for the end of his days. Last names didn't matter when all he whispered in the dark was _Josh_. In the back of the van, in green rooms, in gas-station parking lots, and in Taco Bell drive thrus, Tyler has looked at Josh and known deep down that he would give his life for this man. It wasn't just _Josh_ Tyler whispered into the night; it was _hold me_ and _kiss me_ and _do you think we can do this?_ and _you have morning breath_ and _kiss me_ and _kiss me_ and _I love you_.

It was quiet.

Wiping his face on Josh's shoulder does nothing to curb the tears that continue to fall. He keeps at it. He keeps wiping his face and crying, and then he's shaking so hard Josh struggles to keep still himself.

"I'm _scared_ ," Tyler says. He breathes against Josh's neck, and Josh draws him in, closer and closer and closer.

"I'm scared, too. I'm scared, too."

*

Josh stays as long as the technician allows, but it isn't long enough. Tyler is forced to say his goodbyes in a hallway with humming lights that irritate his head. He fights to keep Josh's fingers tangled in his as he's taken away. Josh tells him, "It's okay," with tears in his eyes. "It's okay, okay? We'll be okay."

They stay like that, staring at each other, on opposite ends of the hallway, fingers outstretched.

*

He damaged his right temporal lobe.

"You can still talk, though." Josh sits on Tyler's bed after the doctor has left them alone. "Doesn't that affect your speech?" He's speaking in circles, rhetoricals. "Maybe it's minor. Maybe there's so little damage that nothing is _actually_ wrong."

Tyler closes his eyes.

As much as he would love to believe there's nothing wrong with him, he can't shake that weighted feeling of dread. He knows his brain wasn't the healthiest to begin with, but this is _definitive proof_ it's damaged—possibly beyond repair. Could his brain even be repaired? Can he fix his temporal lobe?

He had sat there as the doctor mulled over the results of his scans. Gripping his thighs, leaning in to inspect the scans not nearly as intently as the doctor, Tyler watched the end of the doctor's pen float around the areas of his damaged brain and thought, briefly, that, after all this, he didn't deserve to be fixed.

*

Tyler has visitors—Mark, Brad. They come separately, but they both approach his bed like skittish animals—eyes wide, shoulders low. They speak in slow voices, stretching out their vowels and cutting off their consonants.

They don't know what to do with their hands. First, they hang by their sides, fingertips twitching; and when Tyler proves he's able to sit up in bed by himself, speak, and smile, they hug him with such an intensity Tyler has never seen come from each of these men in the time Tyler has known them.

And when Tyler cries, and they join in, that intensity melts into a muted softness that extends into the smallest pores on Tyler's face.

While Tyler asks nothing of the sort from Brad, he does ask Mark if he could take a photo—" _Not_ like that," he insists, after Josh steps forward and hovers over him. Josh leans across the bed, grabbing the railing and curling his fingers until his knuckles are white. The stance is protective, and Tyler finds himself at peace as he settles down in bed.

"Like what, then?" Josh glances at Tyler. "We're not posting a selfie. We _can't—_ "

"My hand," Tyler says. "Just _something_."

Mark bumps into the conversation, his hands stretching to Tyler and Josh in a casual stance. "Josh, I know you've been avoiding Twitter and you haven't been on the band account providing updates like I have, but—I can tweet about how Tyler's out of surgery and how the doctors have said all these good things, but all of that _doesn't matter_ because the fans aren't fucking believing us since they're not hearing from Tyler directly." And Mark looks at Tyler, and his eyes are wet; an apology lives there, afraid.

Tyler says, "Here," and nudges Josh away from him. As nonchalant as he can, he grabs onto the rail. His grip is weak, but it's enough, and Mark takes out his phone and snaps a quick photo, making sure to capture the paper bracelet hanging from Tyler's thin wrist—another line in the sequence of tattoos.

"What should the caption say?" Mark's already clicking onto Twitter, setting up posts for there and Instagram.

"I don't know," Tyler says. "It doesn't matter. Just put whatever." Watching Mark type, Tyler leans back in the bed. Slowly, his eyelids droop. "Make it be lowercase. Make… make a weird animal symbol. Just… just… just act like you're me."

Josh pulls the blankets up to Tyler's chin. He kisses Tyler's forehead.

Mark says, "Got it."

*

The caption is simple: _|-_

*

The car ride to Ohio is uncomfortable. Josh drives too slow, scared of getting into an accident. Tyler reclines in the passenger seat, his left foot propped on the dash and his right leg pulled up to join him in the seat, leaned against the car door. He's gazing out the window, watching the other cars pass them by with no trouble.

It isn't any of this that makes Tyler uncomfortable. No, his stomach churns at the radio. He's lying here, counting every yellow car that passes them, and he can't understand why Josh's speakers distort the sound in such a terrible way. It's twisted, like a taut rubber band finally snapping and fluttering to the floor to rest alongside a roar that resembled rain smacking against a tin roof.

Tyler says, "What's wrong with your radio?"

Josh glances at him. "What?"

"Just—" Tyler braces himself on the armrests, propelling himself forward to collide the palm of his hand with the knobs on the radio. Flicking through the stations, Tyler attempts to seek a channel that doesn't relay all the cranky notes and upset melodies.

However, they're all the same—it blends together in a soup of reverbs that rattle Tyler's eardrums into symphonies that provoke throbbing down the sides of his skull. "I don't understand," he whispers, and jumps at Josh's hand touching his fingers.

"How 'bout you focus on resting?" Josh suggests. With a quiet tap, he shuts off the radio and returns his attention to the road.

Slowly, Tyler settles back in the seat, broken bones aching, as he counts the third yellow car that passes them by.

*

His head hurts.

*

The first week home features nights that never end and days that never begin. With drawn curtains in their room, Tyler never meets any sunlight that borders their windows, nor the light of screens in any form.

He refuses his phone, no matter how much Josh pushes it on him. "I bet you're dying to lurk," Josh says one night, after Tyler's unable to keep his eyes shut against the pillow. "Come on. Just get on Twitter. Like a few tweets. Go crazy."

"No," Tyler mumbles.

And night after night, Josh continues to bump Tyler's phone against the cast wrapped around his right arm. "Here," he says. "Here."

Tyler grabs his phone with his left hand. His fingers curl loosely around the case, and he hears it creak in his grasp, hears the case _crack_ against the wall when he throws his phone. "No," he says simply, that thud a punctuation mark.

And night after night, Tyler's phone lies there in broken glass and bits of plastic. Josh no longer offers a source of artificial life.

In a way, he understands—or that's what Tyler tells himself to avoid apologizing. He knows he can buy a new phone, but no amount of money in the world can heal the broken parts floating away in Josh's chest.

Where Tyler has fractured ribs inside his torso, Josh's heart bounces to a beat that Tyler knows must resemble the echoes of several dozen sobs.

Every time Tyler opens his eyes, Josh is always awake, always by his side. And if Tyler tries shuffling to the bathroom on a pair of crutches, after he manages to sit on the toilet without tipping off, Josh waits by the doorway. His eyes pierce Tyler's own. Tyler wants to crack a joke about feeling like a dog displaying dominance, but that look in Josh's eyes—the acute pain and apprehension—Tyler remembers Josh witnessed his death.

At the hospital, Tyler was dead on arrival—and with everything in his gut and soul, Josh must have hoped and prayed the doctors were wrong when they discovered the lack of pulse humming throughout Tyler's body.

Josh is recovering just as much as Tyler.

So, when Tyler opens his eyes from his slumber and discovers Josh _finally_ sleeping at the end of that first week, he holds his breath, lowers himself to his knees, and cleans up all the glass.

He finds it easier to stand.

*

Tyler starts the second week by using Josh's phone to call his mom while Josh is in the shower. The sun has set, and for a moment, he thinks she won't answer—not because the caller ID will say it's Josh, but because it's late; she might be asleep. He needs to sleep.

She answers on the first ring, speaking, "Hello?" in a rushed tone that titters on the edge of despair. Tyler imagines her hand shaking as she holds the phone up to her ear.

"Hey, Mom," Tyler says, and that rushed tone shifts into the rushing of a waterfall when she begins to gush questions and coos. Out of everything she says, he can only hear his name. He holds on to that.

"I'm okay," he tells her. It feels like a lie.

She knows how being injured has him akin to rattling the bars of a jail cell. It wasn't just him being confined to plaster casts and immobility; it was him shifting into a prisoner of his own mind. Jumping around on the stage was a workout and helped far more than he would ever know, but being on stage was also an exercise for his mind. For him to remain stagnant in this manner was draining him in ways these broken bones could never do.

"You know, I can come over there and help you two out, if you need it."

Tyler listens to the shower water hit the bottom of the tub. He cradles the right side of his head, the fingers sticking out from his cast stiff and itchy. "You all saw the videos of me falling, didn't you?"

Her silence is enough of an answer. And then, quiet, she says, " _Honey_."

"I'll call you if anything happens. I just wanted you to hear my voice."

"Tyler—"

It takes every ounce of control in his body to keep himself from pitching Josh's phone across the room. A silent soldier, Josh had ordered Tyler a new phone this very morning, and now Tyler's gripping Josh's phone so tightly his hand cramps.

Still cradling the side of his head, Tyler slides his fingertips along the curve of his skull. He imagines a puzzle beneath his buzzed scalp, imagines all the broken pieces held together with flimsy pieces of cardboard by industrial staples. Before his accident, Tyler wanted to grow out his hair, even entertained the thought of a mohawk, and he's reverted to that of a baby bird—patchy and ugly, uncoordinated and lost.

Josh emerges from the bathroom. Water droplets run down the length of his arms as he trots about their bedroom, searching for clothes in their shared closet.

Tyler sits in muted darkness, only a dim lamp on Josh's side of the room illuminating what it can. He watches Josh flick through articles of black, black, and black before shrugging off one of Tyler's hoodie from its hanger. His back to Tyler, Tyler stares at the muscles all the way down Josh's spine tense up and never consider the possibility of relaxing. "How's your mom doing?"

"Let's get married," Tyler says.

Those muscles down Josh's spine, they relax, then, until Josh's shoulders cave in on themselves. "Tyler—"

"What? You don't wanna marry me anymore?"

"That isn't—"

"Josh, look at me."

And Josh's eyes belong to the moon; they're wide, turbulent, so very enchanting as they drown in his face. They disappear for a moment, when Josh pulls the hoodie over his head, but they reappear in stride. The mattress dips at Josh's weight, and Tyler feels he's dipping, too, falling and falling—but he's sitting still, his hand to his head, Josh's phone in his grip.

The obsidian engagement ring on Tyler's left-hand ring finger clicks against the phone, rubs Tyler's skin. "You don't wanna marry me anymore."

"Maybe I want you to be able to stand by yourself at the altar without crutches—"

"Shit—"

"Tyler, you're okay—you're—what's going on?"

Tyler's fingers curl. He wishes he had hair on his head, wishes he could twirl his fingertips around those strands and make knots with his knuckles. "I can't explain it, but I feel like the doctors didn't tell me everything they were supposed to—"

"You don't—Tyler, no." Josh edges closer, wraps his arms around Tyler's shoulders. "They wouldn't lie to you. They would have told you if—"

"I feel like I'm running out of time," Tyler whispers into Josh's neck, "and I think God made a mistake bringing me back from the dead."

Tyler waits for Josh to reply, but Josh doesn't say another word for the rest of the night.

*

The next day, Josh eases Tyler from their bedroom and into the living room, where he sits on the floor as Tyler sits on the couch. He paints Tyler's toenails yellow—and then, he grabs each of Tyler's hands and paints his fingernails yellow, too, mindful of the cast. Tyler doesn't protest. He welcomes the sun dancing along his fingertips.

*

When the third week stretches in view, Josh lies down next to Tyler in bed and hugs him so tightly Tyler worries his healing ribs will crack again.

"We'll be okay," Josh says. "Do you want Mark to come over? Do you want to see anybody?"

"No."

All he wants is to stay here, in this bed, oily and worrying his next breath will be his last. He can't say that to Josh, though—Josh, who he has heard begin to talk to himself throughout their quiet house; Josh, who he has heard pray to God to _answer_ him or _I swear I'm gonna fight You or something_.

Lying here next to Tyler, Josh says nothing of the sort—wouldn't fathom the thought of Tyler eavesdropping on his prayers, something that is so personal and so shameful all wrapped up in two palms pressed together. With his face buried in the dip of Tyler's neck, Josh says, "I understand why you're isolating yourself, and I want you to know that it's okay." He raises Tyler's hand to his mouth and kisses each knuckle. "I don't like seeing you lock yourself up; I already feel like I lost months with you when you spent it down there in that basement—and I _know_ I was down there with you when you were working," Josh adds.

"You never lost me," Tyler says.

During the beginning stages of _Trench_ , Tyler brought Josh into his basement studio and warned him not to speak because it'd ruin his workflow. Of course, Josh didn't listen.

Clifford was just an egg then, unaware of the impact he would have on the world. Tyler drew him as such—as an egg—on a sticky note. He pressed it to a whiteboard. Josh watched him. Josh wanted to know what was inside the egg—" _What type of bird is it?_ "

Tyler just shook his head.

Josh smiled. "When you're ready to tell me, I'll be here to listen." He drew on the sticky notes as Tyler wrote lyrics that made no sense to him at the time.

Those lyrics, they eventually made sense.

Everything _eventually_ makes sense.

"Talk to me," Josh nearly begs into the warm skin over Tyler's collarbone, and Tyler utters, "It's _hard_ ," and Josh squeezes Tyler that much tighter.

In the morning, Josh opens the curtains around their house, the blinds, some of the windows. The circulation of the cool breeze guides Tyler around the halls, through the rooms, the kitchen. He's on his crutches, leaning as much weight as he can off his knee. He passes Josh, spots Josh from the corner of his eye.

He doesn't feel like chewing off Josh's head anymore.

*

The start of the fourth week has Josh pulling Tyler to the kitchen table, away from his new phone plugged into his laptop trying to restore the latest backup. At the table, Josh dumps a box of Sharpies between them. "It's time, don't you think?" he says, uncapping a brown marker. He's not wearing a shirt, only a pair of black shorts—the ones Tyler wore for the "Stressed Out" music video. They're a bit small on Josh, stretching thin across his thighs, but he doesn't seem to mind as he takes the seat next to Tyler. "Don't peek until I'm done, okay?"

"Okay," Tyler says, and watches Josh's hands roam up and down the length of his cast.

The scribbles and blotches of color mean nothing to Tyler until it hits him rough and fast, like a punch to the nose; Josh has been drawing his tattoo sleeve onto Tyler's cast for the past twenty minutes.

And Tyler—Tyler begins to cry at that.

"Oh," he whispers. " _Oh_."

Josh shushes him. "I'm not done yet." He snaps off the lid of a blue marker and begins coloring the sky. He's consulting his own arm, making sure everything is the right shade—or as close as Sharpies can get to it. The colors on Tyler's cast are saturated, more graphic.

Josh finishes within the hour. "I think we can take a selfie," he says, "if you want."

Tyler's avoided mirrors. He's only seen himself through reflections in shiny surfaces throughout their house, but he has felt the bruising and the swelling and how much it aches. That was weeks ago. He can barely feel it now.

"How does my hair look, dude?" asks Tyler.

"Dude, it looks good," answers Josh, and taps onto his camera app.

First, he takes a photo of Tyler's cast, making sure to capture all angles of the makeshift tattoo. Then, he scoots closer to Tyler, holding his arm up to the camera. Tyler gets the message; he does the very same, unable to hold a straight face.

The next photo Josh takes is embarrassing—Tyler's crying, his hands over his mouth and Josh kissing his cheek.

Josh makes this the cover photo of the album he uploads to Instagram. He tags Tyler as the very visible tear on his cheek.

 _It's hard,_ reads the caption, _but my boy is so strong. I didn't know how else to make him feel better than to make him look more like me. I think he likes it?_

As they lie in bed for the night, Tyler, on his new phone, comments on Josh's post— _no i hate it and i can't wait to get this thing off_

Josh rolls over in bed and kisses his chin.

Once Josh is fast asleep, Tyler stays awake for another hour, just studying the photos Josh uploaded. He was right to assume his face would look better; there's no hint of discoloration anywhere, no black eyes, no busted nose. He looks _normal_ , and Tyler is ashamed to feel that he doesn't deserve to feel like this at all.

Their fans explode in the comments. They're happy. They're so happy.

He realizes this is the first time the fans have heard from him—have seen his face since the accident. He wonders if he should get on Twitter and say something. What could he say?

There will be videos and photos. There will be get-well-soon messages and maybe even death threats. There will be fanart and fic. There will be love and love and love.

The first tweet Tyler reads forces him to send his phone to the floor, untouched for the rest of the night.

 _We just got them back_.

*

His head hurts.

*

It was always going to be a fall.

Despite every precaution the crew took, at the third show of the tour, the inevitable happened—because when it came to him falling, it was never a matter of how, what, or why; it was always _when_. When would he misstep? When would a railing break? When would God tug at the collar of his shirt, hoist him into the air, and tell him, "Enough is enough, you bastard boy," with fire on His breath?

Tyler was in the air, not because of God's fist at the nape of his neck, but because he was above the pit on that catwalk, above his own man-made trench. He stepped, one foot in front of the other, and he sang, and he sang, and he wanted to stop time, but he didn't want to stop it like this.

His eyes were closed when it happened. His mind didn't want him to remember how much it hurt to watch the microphone's strap slip from his wrist, how he couldn't grab it, how he leaned forward and tried to catch it, how he couldn't catch it.

His eyes were closed when he fell into the pit.

Their hands, he will never be able to forget how rough their hands were along his body; he knows most of them were trying to help, but the others, they were creatures who yanked at his jacket and popped off all the buttons. He heard fabric rip. He heard screaming.

He landed hard, lifeless, and as soon as he registered the bodies underneath him, he screeched at the top of his lungs. All around him was loud, too, making his own cries of worry seem childish and nonsensical. Could this all be in his head? Could he be up in the air right now, and he had yet to fall? Would it be okay if he closed his eyes?

He closed his eyes, and the creatures were on him, pulling at his clothes, swiping his shoes and the tape off his fingers. Someone kicked him. Someone stepped on him. Someone kicked him. In his ribs, his arms, his gut, his head—the hits were blinding headlights, and they caught him in them.

He stared at them. He had to stare at them.

Shoes flew in his direction, too fast for him to shut his eyes or cover his face with the crooks of his elbows. He couldn't raise his arms. He thought they might be broken.

There was blood.

Someone knocked him in the mouth and shouted. Someone else stole the oxygen from his lungs with their toes. Someone else grinded the heel of their boot into his ear.

Someone else recorded a video. Someone else recorded a video. Someone else recorded a video.

He wonders if they got the _clout_ they wanted, if it was all worth it. "Please," he said. "Please, can you stop? I'll do anything. _I'll do anything_."

Fingers splayed and crimson, he reached up, and they all dove to check an item off their bucket list.

And then, the crowd parted, and the eyes on him were ten times worse than the thousands through a phone screen. He didn't want to move, but he moved. He didn't want to be saved, but he spotted a bright light and thought God was here to finally berate him.

It wasn't God. It was Josh, Josh with strong arms and chewed-up, pink lips.

And those fingers twisted into his shoulders and yelled, " _I think he's dead_." All those hands on him, they struck chords in him that surged waves and waves of pain throughout his body. Maybe they were trying to help him. Maybe they weren't.

He stayed for as long as he could, wanting Josh to be the last sight he saw, the last person he heard. And as his vision began to blur, as he began to breathe in more blood than oxygen, he gazed upon Josh and listened to him seethe, listened to him growl, "Fuck off. Fuck _off_."

*

He thinks he wakes to a damp washcloth against his forehead. He thinks he wakes to Josh's fingers along his scalp. He's tittering on the hazy edge of dream and reality; the longer he lingers here, the more he begins to register the damp washcloth against his forehead and the fingers along his scalp as tangible sensations. "Josh," he tries to say, but Josh shushes him. It turns into a whistle.

"You're okay," Josh says. "You're all right."

Tyler swallows.

"You were having a fit," Josh goes on to say, pushing himself closer to Tyler. Tyler feels Josh is shirtless, that his skin is so hot he should be the one with the washcloth to his skin—but as Tyler lies here, that warmth he thought radiated from Josh is actually coming from him.

"Bad dream," Tyler whispers.

Josh kisses him. He thinks Josh kisses him.

It's wet, done with parted lips and between sniffles. Josh's hand is on his cheek, too, holding it, stroking it, detracting from the wet trails on his forehead, his nose, his chin, his mouth, his mouth, his mouth.

It should hurt, but it doesn't. Josh is soft. Josh is so soft.

*

They wake at the same time—early, too early—and they find each other beneath the covers.

Josh is careful as he kisses Tyler, and Tyler can't believe how good it feels to just be here beside Josh and kiss Josh as if his purpose were only to be kissed and kiss Josh until the sun rises.

*

And after the sun rises, Josh helps Tyler from the bed as he attempts to do every morning. This time, Tyler welcomes the help; they walk to the kitchen together, Tyler on his crutches and Josh hanging on as if he were a child in a shopping mall.

Sitting across from each other at the table, they eat their respective breakfasts—a stack of waffles for Josh and a single waffle for Tyler, stabbed in the middle with a slather of peanut butter.

"I'm thinking about… taking a walk outside," Tyler brings up, only daring to cast his eyes Josh's way once Josh doesn't respond immediately.

Josh has his fork raised to his mouth, syrup from his waffles dripping off the prongs. His eyebrows are knitted together so tightly, and his knuckles around his fork are stark white. "Tyler, you need to be mindful—"

Tyler frowns, watches Josh shake his head.

"Be careful, okay?" Josh continues. "You hear me? Please be careful."

"What's gonna happen to me, Josh? I'm gonna break an arm? Break a leg? I've already broken my skull. What more can—?" Tyler stops, beginning to shake his head now. "Sorry, I… I'm sorry. I'll be careful. I'm just gonna go out in the woods, to my usual spot."

"Do you want me to come with you?"

"I think I want to be by myself for a while. Trying to act like… like, trying to return to normal, y'know?"

"I know."

Dressing in layers, Tyler pulls a beanie over his head and steps into an old pair of basketball shorts, sliding into a loose pair of leggings afterward, as he minds the brace around his knee. He wears tube socks with his slippers, curls his toes into the delicate lining within them.

Standing in front of their bedroom mirror, he actively tries to ignore Josh, who's making up their bed, discarded sheets tossed into the corner of the room, along with the comforter. Tyler knows this is the first time he'll be away from the bed for a prolonged period of time since returning home from the hospital, but he tries not to let that thought consume him. It will eat him up.

"I'll have my phone with me," Tyler tells Josh's reflection in the mirror.

"Text me if you manage to catch that deer."

"Oh, I will."

Tyler doesn't anticipate he'll be catching a deer anytime soon, not with his crutches. A blurry photo of the deer will suffice, if it manages to make an appearance today.

His breath comes from his lips in wisps of smoke, still heated from Josh's see-you-later kiss. The crunch of drying leaves beneath his feet accompany those wisps, for Tyler can't allow himself to raise his head and enjoy the trees around him. Walking through the woods, both hands gripping his crutches, Tyler feels as though he's on a state-approved walk—a slow patrol from his mind. And as he walks, he doesn't think, doesn't waver; he has one destination. The closer he gets to it, the easier it is for him to marvel at the barren trees and hazy sunlight overhead.

The bench set beneath a wilting willow tree has lived in these woods for as long as the woods have been here—two beings in a mutualistic relationship. Carved from the same bark as the tree trunk itself, the bench sighs almost in relief once Tyler sits. "Hello, friend," he greets it, patting the armrest on his left. He believes all is right in the world as he leans his crutches and his head back against the tree.

This spot—these woods—has always been a sanctuary to Tyler. He came here often during his breaks from the basement as he composed _Trench_. Sometimes, Josh came with him, sat next to him, and held his hand. Neither of them spoke, not because Tyler wouldn't allow it, but because neither felt the need. It was a place of muted appreciation, silence. Josh would close his eyes, and Tyler would remain awake.

A bird caws.

Tyler wiggles his phone from his pocket and checks Twitter. He pretends he doesn't notice his thumb shaking.

He clicks onto the band account first. The pinned tweet here is weeks old— _Update: Tyler is okay and will be discharged from the hospital soon to recover at home. Thank you for your continued prayers and kind thoughts. We can focus on healing together |-/_

Underneath the tweet, Tyler sees Josh's tweets—a series of them— _I love my boy Tyler so much_ — _I love Tyler_ — _oh my god I love Tyler you guys have no idea how much I love him_

An ache in his heart and no thought to the fans' reactions, Tyler retweets them all.

Tyler scrolls. He finds the first tweet from the thread— _During the show tonight, Tyler sustained injuries from a fall. He's currently receiving treatment at the hospital. Please respect our privacy at this time. We'll keep you updated as soon as we learn anything more. |-/_

And then— _Update: Tyler is out of surgery. He's sleeping now. The doctors say he fractured his skull. They're going to wait until he's feeling a bit better before running any further tests. Please continue to keep him in your thoughts. We're not out of this yet |-/_

In the replies to these tweets, Tyler finds a get-well-soon hashtag from the clique, offering kind words and fanart. He wants to go on a liking spree, but he continues to scroll and searches for the tweets from those who wished he had died. They're hard to find, but he finds them, and he reads them over and over until he is sure he can hear them in any voice he wishes.

He clicks. He taps. He discovers the videos and the pictures—a collection he never knew he desired.

To watch the videos of his own fans, his pride, his _clique_ send their feet into his face and chest to the point he spit up blood makes him crave death even now. Video after video, he watches himself gurgling, gasping for air, suffocating, drowning. "Please," he hears. " _Please_."

Most of the videos are too chaotic to see much of anything.

The pictures are worse.

The photos of his hands reaching up for any kind of purchase are what makes him begin to cry; he had been trapped in a sea of green and yellow, and he was a spot of red—a coral reef.

And there are photos of him and Josh, Josh holding him close, his own face in a state of anguish Tyler has never seen before. He's shirtless, his hat gone, his arms wound around Tyler like tentacles. Tyler checks the comments on this tweet. They are kind. They are calling Josh a saving grace, a life source, the best fiancé in the world.

One fan ponders, _I bet they're gonna rush to get married now so Tyler can be Josh's husband before he dies._

Someone responds, _Fuck you. Tyler isn't going to die._

Another, _let's face it guys, tyler's probably going to die. the band account hasn't tweeted since the incident. Something bad happened. they won't say anything until funeral arrangements are made and then they'll tell us about the viewing/tribute the fans can attend_

And someone responds, _Fuck you. Tyler isn't going to die._

There's a hashtag— _#RIPTylerJoseph_

Some fans pounce, say it is a hoax, _hope_ it is a hoax.

Tyler goes back to the photos of Josh.

Picture after picture, Tyler witnesses himself cling to Josh, his hand over Josh's heart, his eyes wide despite the bruises, his head actively bleeding above his ear.

He wants to scream. He wants to scream at the very top of his lungs.

Instead, he tweets, _some days are worse than others, but overall, i feel okay. i tell myself i feel okay. i am sitting outside for the first time since my accident and it doesn't hurt me. it might hurt me tomorrow. i'm going to focus on Today_

Then, biting his lip, Tyler sends another tweet, _after hitting my head pretty hard, i realized that i'm actually really in love with josh. how am i supposed to tell people i'm helplessly in love with my bandmate? that's so lame_

Josh replies immediately, _when you figure it out, please let me know. I don't know how to tell my bandmate that I'm helplessly in love with him either. whoever this "josh" guy is, I bet he's lucky to have you in his life_

Tyler sends, _i think he knows_ , and locks his phone.

Sitting there, Tyler presses his tongue into his cheek. He looks at his phone, but he isn't looking at his phone; he's trained on the right corner of his phone case—an old thing he hadn't bothered to upgrade along with his phone. He studies the chipped paint, the scuffs there. He dropped it once coming up the stairs from the basement, and then ended up watching it bounce down the stairs and having to turn back around to retrieve it. His phone, he remembers it landed somewhere under his desk. It was dusty down there, with just two clean spots from where his slippers kept residence as he clicked away on his computer. He banged his head when he crawled out from under the desk. His ears were ringing. His head hurt for a while, but it didn't amount to anything.

Now, though, as he sits there on this bench, his head hurts, and his ears ring, and buried deep in his gut is the feeling that _hey, this might actually mean something_. He wishes he knew what. He wishes he knew a lot of things.

Leaning forward, his elbows on his thighs, he lets out that scream at the very top of his lungs.

*

When he returns home, he climbs into bed fully clothed, his slippers still on his feet, and Josh climbs in next to him. He smells like peppermint, and his arms are strong and sturdy against Tyler's chest.

"Are you okay?" Josh says to Tyler's temple, and Tyler says to the warm air between them, "Yes, I'm okay."

Josh takes Tyler's head between his hands and kisses Tyler's mouth. He's careful. He's always careful.

There's no tongue, just alternating between kissing top lip and bottom lip, bottom lip and top lip, chin, cheek, nose, cheek, cheek, forehead—Josh kisses Tyler and mumbles against his wet lips, "I'm so fucking glad you're alive."

Tyler hugs Josh and never lets go.

*

Tonight, they're in bed, Tyler's head propped up with a tower of pillows, and Josh lying on his stomach beside him, feet in the air, swinging his legs. Tyler is on Twitter, watching the videos of him falling on top of their fans, and Josh is on Twitter, watching the videos of their fans holding up signs and wishing Tyler a smooth recovery. Like any other piece of art, fic, or video their fans have made that they _happen to find_ , Josh angles his phone Tyler's way and asks, "Have you seen this?"

Most of the time, Tyler has already seen it—and has already liked it. This, though, is new, and Tyler locks his phone, sets it on his chest, and turns to watch the video. He recognizes some of the faces. He doesn't recognize the song that's playing in the background.

"That's pretty," Tyler says. He smiles. "Can you DM that to me?"

"For sure." Josh goes back to his phone.

Tyler goes back to his. Once he receives Josh's DM with the video, he retweets it, adding a comment with it that says, _i love you guys._

"They're already writing fics about what happened," Josh says.

"Do they have happy endings?"

Josh chews on his thumb. "Some of them. Then again, I don't like to read anything with major character death."

Tyler smiles again.

"Want me to send you some of the ones with happy endings?"

"Yeah, dude." Tyler means it. He could use some happiness right now. He wonders if some fan has already figured out what's wrong with him, if maybe someone right now could be writing a story about his brain damage and what it could mean for the future of the band.

Josh's phone chimes once Josh plugs it into the charger. He sets it aside, keeps it off the bed as he rolls onto his side and lays his head against Tyler's shoulder. Tyler's arm is elevated, as is his knee.

Tyler presses a kiss to the top of Josh's head. "Did you leave kudos on the fics? Any comments?"

"Just the ominous 'thank you' we agreed to do," Josh mumbles against Tyler's shoulder. Through Tyler's t-shirt, he can feel Josh begin to drool.

"Hey, Josh," Tyler says.

"Yeah?"

"In that video you sent me… what song was that playing in the background?"

Josh is quiet. Tyler worries he has fallen asleep, but Josh begins to hum along to that song in the video. In Josh's voice, it doesn't sound nearly as distorted or out of tune—and yet, Josh doesn't state the title of the song, nor provide any other context beyond that humming and the gentle murmur of "nice to know… my kind… will be on my side…"

Tyler falls asleep with those words rolling around in his mind. They play in different octaves, at different speeds; no matter how much Tyler focuses on those words, they blend into that monotonous dial that bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.

*

It's three thirty-three in the morning when Tyler wakes with his skin burning and itching beneath his casts. He thinks his skin is peeling. He knows this isn't true. The twinges of pain conjure images of himself wiggling his fingers beneath the plaster to touch the skin underneath and press until he can be sure the bone is fully healed. It isn't that he doesn't trust the doctors; it's that he trusts himself more.

Next to him in bed, Josh is sound asleep. He stirs only for a moment at Tyler scooting himself off the bed, but his eyes stay shut, his lips remain parted, and a steady stream of drool continues to form a river on the edge of the pillow Tyler was using to elevate his foot. He doesn't know how Josh has gotten hold of it, but this is one of those things Tyler has learned not to question.

Josh is holding the cushion as if it were Tyler, arms looped around it and periodically squeezing. Josh isn't wearing a shirt; he had tossed it onto the floor sometime while he slept. Tyler can see the freckles along Josh's shoulders even in the dark.

With a kiss to his fingertips, which he then taps to Josh's forehead, Tyler limps from the bedroom.

At three thirty-three in the morning, Tyler expects the house to be quiet—and _it is_ —but when his feet make a stunted thud against the hardwood, Tyler feels as though he isn't the one making the noise. It's too heavy, too violent, to be coming from him.

Sometimes, if he's angry, he stomps. It sounds like he's stomping right now, one foot stamp-stamp-stampeding through the house while the other foot is tiptoeing down the stairs.

He isn't angry, though. Buried deep in his gut is determination and pride, and he supposes that could translate into an intense emotion akin to anger. He's trying to be quiet. He doesn't want to wake Josh.

It sounds like a goat is next to him as he travels into the basement, its hooves a backdrop for his attempted en-pointe steps. Tyler even shushes his feet. Somehow, it works.

He glides toward his rolling chair with no stomps, just quiet tiptoes and grabby hands as he spins in his chair and feels at home.

He bangs his knee against the desk. He curses. His Amiibos shake. Mewtwo falls. He curses again in his scramble to grab the figurine and set it upright again. He touches each one, removing a layer of dust from their heads as he boops them.

"It's time to wake up," he whispers.

He thumbs on a light. He settles in his chair and pushes himself to the back wall, until he can see the vast expansion of his basement studio.

There's dust on the floor.

Has Josh not allowed himself to come down here? When Josh visited Tyler down here from time to time, Tyler sat him down and showed him notebooks where he was having trouble finding the right lyrical flow, vocal recordings he had captured but didn't quite feel _right_ about yet. Tyler guided Josh down here when he was ready to share the idea of Dema. "Don't make fun of me," he remembers saying, "but what if…?"

"Are you high?" Josh asked him when Tyler finished speaking, and Tyler sniffed his mustard-yellow hoodie and spun around in his chair.

The sticky note with Clifford as an egg is still pressed to the whiteboard.

There are words there, too, smudged from clothes brushing against it—intentionally and not—and Tyler wishes he could understand what it originally said, for the ominous " _i'm not alone_ " reads as a warning.

It sends a painful shiver down Tyler's spine. "I am alone," he says, turning away and reaching for his ukulele. "I am alone."

He thinks the words the fans sang in that video were played with an instrument like this, something handheld and close to the chest. He holds it the best he can with the cast on his right arm. His fingers go in place along the strings, the neck, and he… he sits there. He sits there in his rolling chair with a leg pulled underneath him and his ukulele pressed close to his chest, and he realizes he has no idea how to play it.

This realization strikes him as painfully as that shivered warning passed down his spine. He hangs his head and strums his fingers against the strings. It sounds wrong. Everything sounds wrong. He can't remember any chord placements—he can't remember what a chord even _is._

Ukulele on his desk, Tyler begins to panic as he reaches for his bass— _his fren_ —and he slings the strap over his shoulder, and he, again, holds it the best he can with his broken arm. His fingers lay along the neck of his pure-white instrument, his thumb taps against the topmost string, and he realizes he has no idea how to play it either.

The fear hits him in the throat this time, urging his hands on their own free will to turn on the computer on his desk and navigate to the web browser. Bass still on his lap, ukulele still on his desk, Tyler types with two fingers, "nice to know my kind will be on my side," and clicks on the first video.

It's their song.

"The Hype," it says, and Tyler feels that deep in his broken bones.

Those notes from a ukulele ring through his ears, and the drums rattle his teeth, and the singing— _the singing_ —

"Why don't I know you?" Tyler pleads to his computer, repeating to every video he clicks on to hear the mismatched melodies and the distorted static vocals. How could _that_ be his voice? He tries singing along, but he doesn't sound healthy. He sounds, sounds, sounds—

He throws his ukulele against the wall.

Snapping into a place he knows not well, he shifts into something violent, something he cannot imagine coming from inside him. His hands, they were black with rage as he grabbed the instrument and swung it around. His hands, he thought for a moment they did not belong to him, but as he sits there now, in his rolling chair, with his arms cradling his bass, he knows this action was his own doing. He can hear the noise his ukulele made as it collided with the wall and thudded to the floor reverberating in his broken skull—and it's almost music, if he closes his eyes.

*

Tyler replaces his instruments, inspecting and kissing his ukulele before returning it to the wall, and tiptoes back to bed. Josh is still sleeping, still snoring, still drooling. It is five in the morning, and Tyler struggles to sleep.

He dreams of the songs with his name attached to them but not his voice.

*

He does this every night for the next week.

The room bleeds blue until Tyler realizes he can switch the screen display to a warmer hue, and then the room bleeds yellow. It's ironic.

Tyler begins to hate the color yellow.

He sits there, down in his basement studio, in front of his desktop computer, and immerses himself in the music he desperately wishes he could recognize. When the notes are all wrong, but the lyrics ring a small bell, he thinks he can be grateful for that.

Despite this saving grace, he is dragged back down when he realizes he cannot play these wrong notes with his bass or his ukulele—and his piano, his little keyboard, after he wheels over to it, he sets his hands on the keys and realizes he cannot play it either. The wrong notes sound _worse._

And his voice—he _can't_.

It's all static, like one of those videos with the fried audio.

He touches his throat. He touches his mouth. He screams into his hands. He pulls his hair. He pulls so hard he thinks he might need to shave it in order to hide the damage.

And after this, he tiptoes back to bed, lies down next to Josh, and struggles to sleep.

He wonders if Josh notices his absence, if maybe Josh does notice and reasons that sneaking off in the night is natural. Maybe he doesn't question it because he knows Tyler needs to be alone, to mourn for something neither of them knows yet.

Josh cares, though—of course, Josh cares. Every time Tyler wakes around eleven in the morning, Josh is still in bed with him, running his fingers through Tyler's hair, down the bridge of Tyler's nose. He never says a thing. He smiles. He just smiles.

Tyler begins to hate that, too.

*

Every morning, after eating breakfast and brushing his teeth, Tyler pulls on layers and stumbles out into the woods. He sits on the bench and listens to the world around him.

He tries to sing, too, following along with YouTube videos with the lyrics on the screen. When he manages to memorize a verse, he attempts to mimic the rhythm without the music serving as a crutch.

No matter how long he spends out here, he never gets better.

Even after his bones fuse back together and his casts are removed, Tyler sits out here and waits for the last part of himself to heal, too.

In the woods, he waits for his voice. In the basement, he waits for his fingers to remember where to hold his instruments. And in the bedroom, he waits for Josh to notice something is wrong.

And Josh never does.

"Let me sing for you," Tyler tells Josh one night, "and you'll tell me what's wrong."

"Tyler, you're out of practice," Josh says. "You're not expected to jump right back in with that angel voice of yours, y'know. This stuff just takes time. Come on. Let's go to sleep."

It almost makes sense—almost.

But that same night, Josh burrows his face into Tyler's neck and whispers to him, "I've been looking up some stuff. Nothing serious."

"Nothing serious," Tyler mumbles.

"There's this thing where you can forget music or, like, completely forget how to create it or recognize it." Josh's hand finds Tyler's. He squeezes. Tyler feels cold.

"I remembered where you didn't recognize that song in the fans' video—or that song that was playing on the radio when we drove home from the hospital. I… It's got two different types," Josh goes on. "You can be born with it or you can… get it after suffering brain damage—and since you damaged your right temporal lobe, and that has to do with understanding language, I thought maybe that—"

"What is it called?" Tyler asks. His throat is tight, his palm so clammy he knows Josh can tell.

Josh's thumb rubs circles on the back of Tyler's hand. "Acquired amusia," he says. "It's called amusia."

"Nothing serious," Tyler repeats to himself. "You said it was nothing serious."

Josh is quiet. Tyler shuts his eyes.

He wants to ask Josh if he would still want to be with him, be in the band, if he can no longer play music; he wants to ask Josh if he'll stay, if he still wants to get married.

Tyler wants to ask Josh if he still loves him, even now.

But he doesn't.

*

His head hurts.

*

He bookends his days with the woods and the basement. His breakfast tastes of ash and brushing his tongue so hard he gags struggles to remove that hint of cinders and blood song.

Sitting on the bench far out in the woods behind the house, Tyler drinks up every scrap of information having to do with amusia. He learns it's commonly found in stroke patients, so it makes sense that the doctors overlooked it. He finds an article with images of the brain that highlights the areas affected by amusia. Pinching and stretching his fingers across his phone's screen, Tyler shifts forward as far as the tip of his nose allows, going cross-eyed from gazing at the photographs that resemble his own brain.

There is no treatment, no cure.

Tyler's expected to live like this now—anxiously fumbling through the unknown—a musician with no voice, no tune, no will, no hope.

He thinks about praying, then decides against it. God wouldn't listen to him.

He scrubs his tongue and his scalp raw, and he breathes just as he always does.

*

And yet, in the morning, he finds himself pillaging through his closet for a dress shirt and matching pants that still fit and don't reek of moth balls. Since settling down with Josh in their own home, Tyler's filled out a bit, but his accident has left him skin and bones again. Looking at his reflection brings him back to those nights they spent in gas-station lots, taking turns freshening up in the bathroom and counting what spare change they had hidden away in the seats to buy a hot meal that didn't taste like vomit covered in a light layer of fur.

Tyler buttons his shirt all the way up to his throat.

Out of breath, Josh walks into the bedroom. He's drenched in sweat, beads of it pooling in his collarbones—just returned from an early morning run. He inspects Tyler as Tyler does the same to him, sizing each other up. They even begin to circle each other, slow paces that remind Tyler of vultures—fitting, he supposes.

"I'm going to church," Tyler tells Josh before he can ask; and Tyler breaks their mock mating ritual to return to the mirror. "No," he says, "you don't have to come with me."

In the mirror, Tyler sees Josh studying him. Weight leaned on one foot, the other pointed up to the ceiling, Josh is ready to become the person Tyler needs him to be. "Okay," he says. "I'm just a text away."

"I know."

His eyes rest on Tyler's face.

Like he's on his way to a first date, Tyler fumbles with his hair, fumbles tucking in his shirt. And when he makes it downstairs without a goodbye kiss from Josh, he even fumbles the car keys and the can of Red Bull he pulls from the fridge. He wishes he knew why he was shaking so much, and he wishes he knew why he thinks chugging a can of Red Bull will help. He should have settled for water, but he likes having the can in his hand—it has weight to it, and he can squeeze it and leave dents the size of his fingers, like he's scooped the last traces of himself from the world.

The last time he drove, it was a few weeks before his accident, when he hit up the drive thru of Taco Bell with Josh in the passenger seat. They were listening to _Trench_ , getting ready for tour, talking about their plans and how excited they were to perform again. "The sky bridge," Tyler remembers saying. "I'm excited for the sky bridge the most."

The steering wheel, the road, the trees—they're familiar blurs to him. Tears spike his vision, which he shakes away while rolling to a stop sign. No cars in sight, he allows himself this moment to crumble into the steering wheel. He clutches it, arms tightly wound around as he breathes and breathes and forgets how to breathe.

Everything he has done, he felt he was on the right path. From a young age, he knew music called his name, no matter how many basketballs his parents threw his way. And from that young age, he screamed down in the basement of his parents' house for God to listen to him. He fled to the woods, too—he continues to flee to the woods.

Still at the stop sign, Tyler rubs at his eyes, sniffs. He was stupid to believe running toward God would give him any answers. In a way, God was selfish. If He needed His followers to sit in some church to acquire His aid, then His aid wasn't necessary. Tyler has run away all his life and forged his way with his own two hands, with his voice—but his voice is broken, and God broke it.

As much as Tyler has needed to twist his faith to fit his worldview—so different from his family's understanding of God—he hates to admit God made a mistake. Tyler realizes God brought him back from the dead— _DOA_ , Josh said—but if God can't bring him back right, then maybe God can't fix him after all.

And if that were the case, Tyler doesn't need Him.

Tyler peers through the windshield, looking both ways, before edging the car forward and taking a right turn; he's going home. He'll surprise Josh in the shower. He'll—he'll—

He's crying again, beating his palms against the steering wheel, and sliding into the front lawn of someone he knew from high school.

No, he might not need God, but he needs his voice.

Tyler screams so loud, so painful—he ends up busting his face into the steering wheel to stop the noises from hurting his own ears; and he does it again—and again—and again. His vocal cords vibrate from beneath his fingers, and it's _wrong_ , like a hummingbird flying with a broken wing. He feels so sick he thinks he might die.

Death is a concept Tyler knows far too well, both abstract and concrete. This time, it manifests itself as pressure standing on his chest. Logically, he knows he isn't really dying; this is merely just a panic attack and nothing more.

Nothing more—nothing more—nothing more—

Next to his ear, the driver's side window splinters like a spider-web. At the center of it, before Tyler can think to lean away from the glass, a hand emerges—black, reeking of iron, and terribly clawed. Its appearance forces the rest of the window to shatter; it sprinkles onto Tyler's thighs, some on his shoulder, but that hand grabs hold of him—and a second hand appears, just as black and oily and clawed as the first, and it latches onto his shirt so roughly Tyler hears fabric tear.

He tries to smack at the hands, but his palms burn from how hard he had beat them against the steering wheel. Even if he hadn't wrecked the nerves in them, he knows he wouldn't be able to pull the hands off him. Something about them seems all-encompassing, and a part of Tyler wants to let them take him.

They yank Tyler from the car, never minding his seat belt or the neighborhood getting ready to wake up. Tyler thinks they wouldn't care no matter the circumstances. They're strong, and they toss Tyler onto the road—and for good measure, whoever has those hands rears back a foot and smashes it into Tyler's face.

Its feet are hard, like a hoof.

Lying on his back, his hands pushing all the blood back into his nose, Tyler gazes up at the person who has thrown him, but Tyler meets the eyes of no one, just the trees overhead with their bare branches bidding him _adieu_. He swivels his head around on his shoulders, rolls on his stomach—he ignores the pain pouring from his nostrils and lips to gather his surroundings. And his surroundings, they're normal. Nothing is out of place—just him, splayed and bleeding along the asphalt and glass.

When he tries to raise onto his hands and knees, those hands find him once again, looping claws around his ankles and giving another vicious yank.

Returning to his stomach, busting his chin, and rattling his teeth, Tyler kicks out his feet, wiggles his hips, and shoves with all his weight to push himself onto his back once more. Spewing blood from his mouth as he coughs, he, again, catches the sight of those trees above him, rather than a capable person.

Those hands, though, he feels them still around his ankles.

He looks down—there's the crouching fiend, head to toe in black, fingers ending in claws, feet ending in hooves, and a lower half of a face that contains no mouth at all. Two horns protrude from its head, small points that weep blood. In greeting, it hisses at Tyler and begins dragging him down the road.

"Fuck, stop!" Tyler kicks out his feet again, but the monster is firm and doesn't let Tyler move too easily as it continues to pull him. At first, its trek was slow, but every inch down the road, the monster picks up speed. It's nearly hopping on its feet, skipping as if this were a normal day for it—maybe it is, Tyler doesn't know; he's grabbing onto anything he can to keep himself on stable ground—mailbox poles, the ends of garbage cans, even tires on cars. His shirt rides up halfway up his back, forcing his skin to rupture in stinging gashes he knows are pumping blood.

Tyler twists and turns and screams, whining sounds that hurt his ears and throat. Using the pads of his fingers, he pets his neck and imagines himself digging inside and pulling at those broken cords that once trembled so smoothly. He thinks, with his eyes closed like this, he'll be able to feel better—if only, if only—

Once he hits grass, the ground swallows him whole and shoves him down, down, down until he's one with the earth, until he's deeper than that—until he's deeper than deep.

He doesn't land. He floats, in suspension, and when he opens his eyes, he stares into the red eyes of another monster.

The monster itself has hold of his shirt, tugging at the collar of it, breathing on him like fire stroking the stubble across his cheeks.

And without hesitation, Tyler asks the monster, "Can you fix me?"

And then he's falling again, smacking into a patch of soil that smells of Josh's old hair dyes. He rubs his face into the dirt, the familiarity, and the dirt sticks where the blood hasn't dried completely, to his fingernails and his teeth as he is overcome with the urge to devour the soil.

The stench of smoke singes the hairs inside his nostrils. It bobs up his head like goo inside a lava lamp—slow at first, and then connecting to form a bandage over his entire brain. He rubs his nose, his eyes, and when he opens his eyes, he does so sluggishly, his tongue heavy in his dry mouth. He feels bloated, too, too big for his body and too small all at once.

He's in the woods behind his house, in front of that bench beneath the wilting willow tree. Coughs rake through his body, violent and threatening to rebreak his ribs. He wraps his arms around his torso, bending at the waist to press his forehead against the dirt of the forest floor.

A campfire burns to his left. It crackles when twigs drop into the flames. Tyler tries to focus on that small noise, rather than the splitting aura of music that pitches itself high above his head.

Inch by inch, Tyler raises his head. At first, he spots a pair of feet next to his face, with long toes and yellowing nails that are sharp and thick. And then, his eyes graze across those legs, the knees, the upper body of a naked reflection of his own self.

Tyler sits upright now, his arms still tightly around his torso, and he stares into the eyes of the man who looks like him, but who cannot be him—this man who has his eyes, yet colored red; his neck and hands, yet dark like his basement; and his face, yet accented by two delicate shadows of horns arching up to the never-ending ceiling of this galaxy.

Of all the names he has created for this entity, only one rests in repose at the center of his mind— _Devil_.

The Devil offers modesty in the form of a ukulele on his lap, which he continues to strum, albeit much softer now, like humming. In the light of the campfire, the instrument is golden in color, and it appears to glow once he sets it aside to say to Tyler, " _What was it you just said to me? I believe I misheard you because… I ain't playing that game._ "

"What game?"

Clicking his tongue, the Devil points a claw at Tyler. " _I ain't playing that game_."

Tyler tries to stand, but he remains on his hands and knees, his eyes drawn to the Devil's red, red eyes as they stare him down. Slowly, Tyler manages to tuck his knees beneath his body. When he speaks, he feels small, insignificant. "Aren't you supposed to be all-knowing anyway?" he asks. "Or is that just God?"

The Devil howls in laughter, tossing his head to the sky with such a resonating crack Tyler fears it has come from his own neck. " _You're cute_."

"I'm serious."

" _So am I._ "

It doesn't take much for Tyler to bite through his lip. "Fuck you."

The Devil pauses, his eyes widening a fraction as he utters, " _Did I strike a nerve?_ "

Tyler shuts his eyes, presses his hands against his forehead, and imagines he's down in the basement, curled up in his chair, dreaming away—and snoring so loudly it echoes through the soundproof walls. Being here, deep in the woods behind his home, sharing words with the Devil—that isn't real; this isn't real. He's in a nightmare, being watched by his Amiibos.

"No," Tyler says.

He attempts standing again, but this time, the Devil swings his ukulele—a long arc that finalizes in knocking the wind from Tyler's lungs as he flies onto his back. Then, the Devil sings to him, soothing and unlike everything about him.

When the Devil laughs this time, Tyler curls his fingers into the dirt. He wants to be the person who cracks this monster's neck in two.

Above him, the Devil leans in, whispering in Tyler's ear, " _Tell me why you summoned me with your blood and greed._ "

And Tyler, he reaches forward, grabbing the Devil's hands—large, warm things on his skin—and begs, "Fix me."

The Devil studies Tyler with his wide red eyes, then shakes off Tyler's hands. He even dares to scoot away from Tyler a few inches away on the creaking bench. " _Excuse me?_ "

"What don't you understand about that?"

" _I don't think_ you _understand_."

"Fix me."

" _I told you I ain't playing this game. That's something you need to be asking God for—not someone of the likes of me._ "

Tyler stands, and he feels tall, powerful, and he leans over the Devil and asserts, "Well, God ain't here, is He?"

And when the Devil stares at him with those red eyes, he crumbles to his knees. The Devil snorts. " _I reckon not_."

"God made… He made a mistake. He brought me b-back, I know He did, but He…" Tyler gnaws at his lips. "God brought me back _wrong_. My brain—it's—it's all wrong, and if God couldn't bring me back _right_ , then I don't think He can fix me."

" _So, now you're asking the_ Devil _to fix you_."

"I'll do anything." Tyler blinks away tears. "Please. I'll do anything. I don't want to be like this. My voice—my music—I'm a musician—it's my job—it's my _life_ —"

" _Get a different job_ ," the Devil says, his smile just as wide and red as his eyes, which remain fixated on Tyler. " _Get a different life_."

The fire crackles.

Tyler glances at the golden ukulele. "I bet it's because you can't."

The Devil quirks an eyebrow. " _Watch your fucking tongue._ "

"You put on a big show," Tyler says, "and that's all you can do. You can't do anything. What I'm even seeing right now—this isn't real. I'm dreaming. I'm still in bed. That demon of yours that dragged me down here? It isn't real either. Nothing about this is _real_."

Tyler wonders if he's actually dreaming, if that even matters. If it's truly the Devil sitting here in front of him, then he'll gladly be damned for the rest of eternity—but if this is a dream, he would never pass up the chance to accuse the Devil of all talk and no action. And if this were God in front of him instead, Tyler would do the very same.

The Devil pounces on him.

At first, he merely sits upon Tyler's chest, his feet curled up on Tyler's sternum, as if he were a gargoyle atop a great building. Tyler, hands thrashing, drives his fists into the Devil's sides. Bleeding and pounding into skin that feels like concrete, Tyler feels like he's back with that demon, defenseless and twisting on the road. The Devil, though, he's stronger, and he grabs hold of Tyler's hands and pins them above his head.

" _There you go_ ," the Devil says, his body now stretched out along Tyler's own—long and lean. He breathes in time with Tyler, his chest rising and falling. Tyler wonders if there are even a set of working lungs in there, or if it's all for show; Tyler wonders if this is _all_ for show, whatever _this_ is—he breathes and feels the Devil breathe with him, heavy, shaking motions that rubs Tyler up against the Devil's concrete skin.

Then, Tyler pushes up with his hips and rolls them over, gaining the upper hand. He sends his hands into the Devil's shoulders, his hands, like he's boxing with Josh. And the Devil, he hits back, bites, and Tyler doesn't stay on top for long.

He perches on Tyler's chest again, a hand on one side of Tyler's head as he uses his other hand to cup Tyler's chin. " _Are you aware of what you're asking me, Tyler?_ " he asks, the tip of his thumbnail pressing into the gap between Tyler's lips. It tastes like the dirt Tyler nearly ate a few moments prior.

"I want you to fix me," Tyler whispers into that claw.

" _Are you prepared for those consequences?_ "

"What consequences?"

The Devil smiles with too-bright teeth. " _Oh, Tyler… I cannot help those who do not need to be helped_ … _and I_ _cannot fix the broken who cannot be mended, but I'll make you a deal_." His large hands press to either side of Tyler's head, keeping him in place to brush their noses together. It feels like he's being burned, branded—the Devil has a ring around his finger that glues Tyler's skin to the grass and the dirt—and blood, blood; Tyler smells nothing but blood.

" _Will you make a deal with me?_ "

That's his own voice Tyler's hearing. He's talking to himself. He isn't talking to himself.

"I want to be fixed."

" _Tyler_ ," the Devil says.

There's a flower in his throat.

" _You do not need to be fixed_."

Roots swim down his esophagus, tangle in his ribs. The petals bloom from his mouth as he unhinges his jaw and tosses his head back. He cries yellow down his cheeks. He bleeds green down the front of his shirt.

Tyler watches the Devil reach forward and pluck a petal from the flower sprouting from his throat.

No matter how much the Devil rubs his claws into the petal, it remains intact.

The Devil looks upon Tyler and begins to sing in a voice Tyler knows was his own before the accident. While there are no words sung, the melodies pull at Tyler's limbs until he curls in on himself. He is a fetus with a flower in his throat and tiny roots wiggling from his fingertips and toes. He cries rainwater. He cries rainbows.

When the Devil sings, it's soft, like his hands on Tyler's face, like his arms around Tyler's torso. The pressure is overwhelming. Tyler thinks his bones are dissolving, cracking into his lungs, serrating the roots of his flower as his flower grows thorns.

He chokes on the blood in his throat. He spits up, over his face, onto the Devil, and the Devil squeezes more, shaking him, thrashing him.

He's singing to Tyler, a lullaby that coaxes the blood out of his mouth and into the air where it suspends in darkness with them.

" _But if you insist_ ," the Devil says.

And Tyler's head pops like a balloon.

*

He dreams of stretching himself across the basement floor. His head pounds. His limbs burn, restless. He moves on his stomach and drags himself up the stairs, to the nearest bathroom. His joints crack. He thinks he is humming.

He refuses to turn on a light.

He dreams of washing his face, his hands, up to his elbows. The water is so cold and so welcome.

And then, he pats himself dry and crawls on all fours back to the bedroom, humming… humming… humming.

*

Tyler wakes to the sun spying through the window blinds and nestling in his nose. The residue of a dream lingers along his hairline, where it aches, and the back of his throat, where it itches.

Josh is shaking him. "Tyler," he says. "Tyler, where the _hell_ have you been?"

"Right here," Tyler tells him, and stuffs a pillow over his head.

"Tyler, just—someone came over to tell me they saw your car fucking wrecked—and you, you were covered in blood—I, Tyler—" The bed dips where Josh climbs on top. Tyler shifts backward for a second until he shuffles over to his side of the bed again. His head remains under the pillow, and Josh seems to respect this for the time being. "They couldn't find you, Tyler," Josh continues, instead joining Tyler under the pillow. " _I_ couldn't find you. What _happened_?"

"I went to church."

"Nobody there said they saw you, Tyler."

Tyler licks his lips. "Well, I talked to _someone_."

Josh rips the pillow away from Tyler and throws it across the room. In tandem, Tyler turns onto his back and looks up at Josh. This hurts—his back, his throat when he speaks higher than a whisper. "I'm okay," he tells Josh, and holds up his hands for Josh to inspect—and inspect Josh does; he grabs Tyler's forearms and feels at his skin, applying just enough pressure to distinguish the bones beneath feature no breaks, as if Tyler would have emerged with them all re-broken. Josh fails to stifle a yawn in his shoulder—a sweet noise Tyler is thankful to hear.

"You look like you've been beat up." Josh lowers Tyler's hands, lets his arms drop to his sides, dangling like loose cables as he twists from side to side.

Tyler glances down at his feet above the covers—tinted blue, the veins stark, the nail polish nearly chipped away. He flinches at Josh's fingers cupping his chin. "Hey—"

"What's wrong with your eyes?"

Tyler blinks. He doesn't feel anything wrong with his eyes, but the way Josh is staring at him—with his own eyes so wide and so wet and his bottom lip sucked into his mouth—that brings Tyler into standing on his feet.

He's light on his feet as he slips into the bathroom, Josh close behind. With a flick of his wrist, Tyler turns on the light and spies his reflection.

He has red eyes.

It's like he's wearing contact lenses, but he isn't. He knows he isn't. He threw out those lenses long ago, after he got a rip in the pair from misuse. But here they are now—his eyes bright and red—like the _Devil_.

And his head—the pain—it's so sharp, drilling behind his eyes and all over his forehead—and he can't hear anything but Josh's voice—" _What's wrong?_ Tyler, baby—here, stand up for me; we can—here, sit on the toilet—"

" _It's my head_ ," Tyler utters, rushing out of him like a faucet. "I don't know what—I feel really sick." He pats his mouth, but he's back to smashing his palms into his forehead in no time; while the urge to vomit is overwhelming, it doesn't cover up the pain shooting through his head.

Josh crouches in front of Tyler, takes Tyler's face in his hands. "Hey." It's a struggle, Josh getting Tyler to look him in the eyes, but Tyler looks at Josh. This is a struggle, too, because Josh doesn't look right. Everything's fuzzy, moving in Tyler's vision as if they are ocean waves. Tyler sways with them.

Josh keeps him steady, pries apart his eyelids the widest they can go. "Your eyes are still red, but maybe—I'm not a doctor, though, so, _uh_ —"

"Josh—" Tyler flings out his hands, grabs Josh's thighs, Josh's forearms, slapping them as much as he continues slapping his forehead. Josh tries to stop Tyler to no avail. Tyler's hands continue to flail, and Josh welcomes it as he places his hands on Tyler's forehead, over the spots that radiate the most pain.

And Josh says, "It feels like you have two knots here."

In lieu of answering Josh's question, Tyler butts his forehead against Josh's hands. They're already there, firm, a hard pressure, and Tyler leans in for that pressure to increase. Josh appears to get the message, for he adjusts his footing on the ground and begins pushing on Tyler's head.

Tyler watches Josh, how he bites his lip and squints his eyes, the way his muscles bulge; he's putting effort into this, but Tyler's putting in effort, as well—and it's much more than Josh.

Josh skids backwards, almost to the wall behind him, with how much Tyler's pushing forward in order to sate the pain. He believes it's working, too, because the pain's wavering. Soon, all that's left is a hollow feeling residing in the pit of his stomach. This is as familiar as his own name.

When he eases away from Josh's hands, Josh falls on his ass to the floor and curls and uncurls his fingers. Tyler has seen Josh like this after boxing rounds, exhausted, a residual smile playing on his lips. There isn't a smile now, just a furrowed brow and a clenched jaw working itself up and down. "Are you, uh… are you feeling okay?"

"Yes," Tyler says, and doesn't think it's a lie. "My head doesn't hurt anymore."

"Do you think that we… w-we need to go to a doctor?"

"No, I'm fine. Everything's fine. It's just—"

"It's just _what_ , Tyler?" Josh pushes himself into Tyler's personal space again and thumbs the two knots across Tyler's forehead. Tyler shivers at the contact, and his eyes roll into the back of his head, but he doesn't move. He lets Josh massage the knots. The fluttering pit of despair in his gut vanishes.

"They're sensitive, I guess?"

"I guess."

Josh kisses them both, and Tyler nearly faints from the white-hot pleasure it sends down his spine. It feels like a second skin.

"Tyler," Josh whispers, but Tyler shakes his head this time, saying to Josh, "I think I'm gonna go back to bed. Is that okay?"

"Of course." Slowly, Josh stands from the floor and reaches forward, and Tyler lets Josh's fingers glide along his cheeks and join at the nape of his neck. His thumbs brace themselves under Tyler's eyes, swiping beneath the bottom lids. "Do you want me to do anything?"

"No, I just wanna sleep."

They go into the bedroom together. Stretching out across the unmade covers, Tyler falls asleep to Josh tucking him in, slipping into a slumber so deep and so heavy he fears he may never wake.

This is the last thought he remembers having as he shuts his eyes. If he were to never wake up, he will gladly sink into this darkness with Josh's hands working him into a cocoon.

But he wakes, and he wakes to his throat aching to what he hopes is due to bacteria. It feels thick, like coagulating blood along the surface of porcelain. Tyler rises silently, his eyes connect to the night sky leaking through the venetian blinds, and Josh, next to Tyler, sets his phone on his chest.

"You okay?" Josh asks.

Tyler lowers his gaze. He stares at Josh. "My throat," he manages to get out before he has to suck in a breath to keep himself from coughing. It itches, crawling all the way up to his nose, and then higher—to his forehead. He has to shut his eyes and squeeze them tight. He has to breathe in so deep and so fast. He has to hold in that breath.

He has to tell Josh they need to have matching pink ties at their wedding.

And when he opens his eyes, he stares at Josh and the dark circles under his eyes, and realizes that he is within those four white walls again—the hospital, _the hospital_ ; he's in the hospital, Josh next to him, curls stuffed under a baseball cap, clutching Tyler's hand so tightly Tyler can't distinguish his hand from Josh's.

"Tyler," he says, "oh, Tyler, lemme grab a nurse—"

Tyler lulls his head around on his shoulders to follow Josh crossing the room. Josh shuts the door behind him. In the shadow of the closing door, the Devil stands, his two great horns casting shadows that dare to touch Tyler's feet.

He isn't smiling. He says not a word.

He waves at Tyler and disappears once Josh returns with a nurse.

Like déjà vu, the encounter paces itself slow.

"Tomorrow," the nurse assesses. "He'll be stronger tomorrow. I'll give him another dose of morphine to help him sleep. We can't have him exerting himself."

"Can't you run tests _now_?" Josh presses. "Please, his eyes—"

"He popped some blood vessels. That's all. We'll know more tomorrow, okay?"

Josh holds Tyler's hand.

Tyler closes his eyes.

*

Like before, Josh stays as long as the technician allows, but it isn't long enough. Tyler is forced to say his goodbyes in a hallway with humming lights that irritate his head more now than ever. Instead of fighting to keep Josh's fingers tangled in his as he's taken away, Tyler lets Josh slip away.

They stay like that, staring at each other, on opposite ends of the hallway, Josh with his fingers outstretched, Tyler with his fingers rubbing his forehead.

The doctor is the same doctor as Tyler's last visit, a tall white man with broad shoulders and a voice that reminds Tyler of his childhood pastor. He smiles the same way, too, speaks to Tyler in a condescending tone that makes him think he's twelve years old again.

"Now, Tyler, let's look at your brain. You haven't kept up with your check-ups, have you? We need to be on top of this, you know that, right? Do I need to remind you that you have a TBI?"

"I don't have a TBI," Tyler tells the doctor. "I'm okay. Nothing is wrong."

Blinking twice, his pupils blown to take up the entirety of his irises, the doctor looks at Tyler and turns to Tyler's brain scans on the screen in front of them. Scoffing and throwing his hands up in the air, he says, "Would you look at that?! You don't have a TBI! You're okay! Nothing is wrong!" He slowly swivels on his stool, the biggest smile on his face.

"Okay," Tyler says. "I can go home now."

"You can go home now."

*

Tyler watches Josh hold up his brain scans to the light, focusing on the place where he was bleeding, where those pictures from Twitter showed he was bleeding—above his ear; his right temporal lobe isn't damaged anymore.

Tyler remembers Josh's worries after the doctor first told them he had brain damage. _Maybe it's minor. Maybe there's so little damage that nothing is actually wrong_.

Now, Josh sits next to Tyler on the hospital bed, jumping from the _before_ pic to the _after._ His head shakes and shakes. "It doesn't make sense, Tyler. How could this happen?"

"Did you not want me to get better?"

Josh's shoulders fall.

Tyler sits, ankles crossed, hands in his lap, and feeling so out of place in this hospital gown. He sits and stares, and Josh sits and stares—not at him. Josh can't look at him. He hasn't been able to look at Tyler since Tyler returned to the room.

"Do you really think that of me?" asks Josh. He lowers the scans. "I like taking care of you, Tyler, but I wouldn't go out of my way to make sure you couldn't take care of yourself for the rest of your life."

Tyler picks at his nails.

"I'm confused. That's it. I'm confused."

"When aren't you?"

Josh looks at him, then, smiling so bright he'd be able to look at the scans with just his smile. "Hey. Shut up."

Tyler raises his hand, running his fingers across his lips and throwing away the metaphorical key.

"So," Josh says, and he lies back until he's resting against Tyler's chest, his head against Tyler's collarbone. He's deflating even here, but this is controlled, relaxed; Tyler can tell Josh has wanted to lean his weight on him in this way for a long time. For Tyler, he treasures this weight, heavy and cherishable. He wraps his arms around Josh's shoulders and pulls Josh in that much closer, squeezing him with as much vigor as his bones will allow. He thinks he may choke Josh. He thinks Josh may like that, only in this moment—only in this moment.

Up to the window once more, Josh holds up Tyler's scans, the broken brain in his left hand and the healed brain in his right. "What do we do now?"

Tyler breathes in Josh's hair. He closes his eyes. "We go home."

*

During the drive home, Tyler turns on the radio.

"You don't have to do that," Josh says. "I know you—"

But the music is beautiful. Tyler can see it so vividly—the notes resting on their staff, treble clef at the helm, all in technicolor and strive.

He cries. He cries.

*

On Twitter, on his personal account and retweeted onto the band account, Tyler posts the picture of his brain with no damage to it at all and writes, _my brain after streaming trench._ Then, another picture, this one of his damaged brain, he writes, _my brain after streaming a star is born._

Within minutes, there's a trending hashtag— _#ourbrainsintrench_. Contained in those tweets are, of course, selfies of the clique and the repeating sentence "stream trench for your mental health," followed by a yellow heart emoji.

*

The window to Tyler's car gets replaced. Tyler watches them do it, sitting on the curb and leaning his elbows on his knees to peer into the garage. He wishes he could hear what they're saying, if they're gossiping about him—the version of him as a lead singer or the version of him as the kid who used to run around this town, basketball in hand. Tyler hopes they aren't talking about him at all. He would like that.

Josh sits next to him, on his phone. He taps his foot to the song spilling out from the garage, a song which Tyler recognizes and hums. "Maybe you don't really have amusia," Josh notes. "I mean, maybe you had a mild case of it, and we just had to wait for it to clear up."

"Do brain injuries work like that?"

"Not really." Josh shakes his head. "I wish your eyes looked normal again."

"I think I want to go back on the road," Tyler says, the suggestion slipping from his lips so swiftly it forces his chin to quiver. He doesn't know why he has such a strong reaction, as if his body is at war with his own words.

Fortunately for him, Josh picks up on this, and he sticks his phone in a pocket to draw his attention to Tyler and only Tyler. "Look, I want to be back out there as much as you do, but… I dunno, maybe it's just me, but something just feels _wrong_ , y'know?" Josh shakes his head and presses his hand into the space between Tyler's shoulders. He rubs circles, coaxes out all the worries from Tyler's eyes. "No one's gonna pressure you to do something you don't wanna, Tyler. We'd all understand if you can't do it anymore. You went through so much shit, dude."

Tyler presses his forehead against his forearms.

Josh continues, "Mark told me that, like, _who cares_ if the fans get upset. He said he'll handle all the assholes on our social media if it meant you'd feel even just a little bit better."

"I just can't _quit_ , Josh. That isn't fair to our fans—to you—to _me_."

"Forget about our fans. Forget about me. Do what you need to do for you to heal." Josh's fingers curl, and he kisses the curve of Tyler's ear. "I love you. You know that, right? I love you so much."

Tyler's ring burns his skin so hot he has to remove it when Josh goes to pay for the window repair. Even in his back pocket, the ring singes straight through his body and to his heart.

*

When Tyler sits in the basement, he keeps the door open, in case Josh wants to visit. The angle of Tyler's phone, propped up by the small valley between his keyboard and desktop, shows the staircase behind him and, he supposes, Josh's legs, if Josh were to tiptoe past the door.

In his hands, he holds his ukulele. The last time he held this instrument, he threw it against the wall in frustration. He runs his thumb along the dents in the wood, chips he knows are somewhere still on the floor, along with the dust. He deserves to get splinters for mistreating one of his oldest friends, but the surface of the instrument is as smooth as ever.

Tyler glances at his phone. His Instagram livestream currently has four thousand viewers—and growing strong. He hadn't posted anything about it, neither on Instagram nor Twitter. He hopped on, and now he's waiting for the push notifications to send out, like carrier pigeons. It's like his first livestream, where he stood in the woods behind his home and thanked their fans for indirectly buying him a _leaf blower_. When was that? It feels so long ago, and Tyler doesn't remember the last time he used that leaf blower.

"Sorry," he tells his phone, "I don't think I used that leaf blower all that much. I'll be sure to buy something I'll actually use next time. I mean… who even uses leaf blowers, y'know? Get out of here with that. The only thing I need blown is—well—" Biting his tongue, Tyler stares at the camera, then smiles and slides his fingers down the ukulele's strings, sharp and fast and loud. Despite the volume, it rings harmonious. He even enjoys the way it rattles his teeth and churns his stomach. Going by the explosion of comments in the chat, he thinks they like it, too—the single note and the blowjob implication.

"So," Tyler starts, "I know you're worried about me. I know it'd be insensitive of me to say you shouldn't worry about me, so I'm not gonna say that. You are allowed to feel however you're feeling when it comes to this. I know if I were in your shoes, and I saw what you saw"—Tyler takes in a breath—"If I saw what you saw, I would be scared. Honestly? I'm still scared. I don't know… I don't know what tomorrow's gonna hold me for me, but… but whatever it holds, I know there's a place for me there."

They haven't gone into the specifics of what Tyler's gone through—amusia or whatever was going on up there after he fell and shook away all the cobwebs. He wonders if he should reveal that. If they just leave it at a brain injury, would the fans be okay with that? Maybe somewhere down the line, Tyler can tell them he had acquired amusia—but now? How? No, his brain is fine.

His brain is fine.

He realizes his fingers have been strumming throughout his talking; the exact song is lost on him, if it's even a song that's created yet. He continues to pluck at the strings, continues to talk to their fans.

He tells them, "Tomorrow holds a place for me and Josh and you and everybody else who may feel like they don't belong. It's scary. I know it's scary. You know what, though? I have Josh, and I have you, and thinking about that makes it not so scary anymore. So… so, I just wanted to do this video _thing_ to tell you I love you all so very much, and I can't think of a future where I'm not… where I'm not doing what I do now."

God, he had _just_ told Josh how he wanted to get back on the road, and as he's relaying the same information to their fans, it feels sick, all the way down his throat to his stomach. Sitting here, looking at his phone, his hands still and his lips parted, he watches the comments come spit-fire fast; while most are keysmashes and emojis, Tyler reads the concern of their fans. Some predict this is Tyler telling them all goodbye, that this might be the end.

So, Tyler says, "I love you a lot. Like, a hell of a lot. I'm gonna do what I can to get better _all the way_ , and then… and then Josh and I can get back out there and continue to share our music. It might take… It might take a little while"—Tyler shuts his eyes, sighs—"but we'll keep you updated with everything. I can promise you that."

And he opens his eyes. He smiles at his phone. He echoes, "I can promise you that." Then, "I see what you've been saying online. Some of it is cool. Some of it is not so cool. I ignore that. Keep being cool, and I'll keep… doing my thing."

As a parting gesture, Tyler forms their logo with his fingers. He watches their fans type the same in the comments before he closes out of the livestream.

Josh tags him in a post on Instagram—a ten-photo album compiled of screencaps Josh himself took during the stream. He captions this, _my baby boy_ , and Tyler responds, _ok dog breath._

Josh isn't exactly quiet when he joins Tyler in the basement, and he doesn't try to be either. In greeting, he presses a kiss to the top of Tyler's head and says, "I'm proud of you."

"I'm thinking about just, like, doing a livestream every once in a while, y'know? Perform for them that way? I could record videos or whatever—get Mark involved." Tyler brushes the pad of his thumb down the ukulele's strings. "I don't want to grow stagnant. You know what I mean?"

Leaned up against Tyler's desk, Josh grabs one of Tyler's Amiibos—Mewtwo—and curls his fingers around its body. "I think that'd be cool," he says, but Tyler thinks he doesn't mean it. Josh isn't smiling, doesn't look the least bit delighted at the notion Tyler wants to continue making music.

"You know," Tyler says, "you can be there, too. You can bust out your cajón, and we can do acoustic sets."

"Yeah, I could."

Tyler wonders if Josh even smiled into the kiss on the top of his head. "You _know_ ," Tyler tries again, "you can't _stop_ me from making music. Do you know _that_?"

Josh connects with his eyes. There's heat, a fire that burns—Tyler can hear it, smell it.

"I just think you're jumping into something you don't need to be doing," Josh admits, placing Mewtwo back on the desk. "And I'm having a real hard time believing you're not forcing yourself to do this because you're worried about fading into obscurity."

"What the fuck does that _mean_?" Tyler cries. "Yeah, sure, whatever— _Trench_ isn't _Blurryface_ , but we're still doing _good_ —and the band is _not_ fading into obscurity anytime soon."

When Josh snorts, Tyler sneers. "What?"

"You're being ridiculous, Tyler. You got hurt—"

"I'm _better_ now."

"—you _died_."

" _I'm still here_."

Throwing up his hands, Josh walks past Tyler and takes the stairs two at a time. "You know what I mean," he shouts over his shoulder. He leaves the door open, wide open, too open.

Tyler stares at that piece of wood he wishes would just _shut_ and seal him off from everybody else. He was better off down here by himself, struggling to connect words to the imagery of the world he had sprouting in the deepest recesses of his brain.

The second time Tyler stares at that door and those stairs, he sees the Devil sitting on the steps. Still naked and still just as horned and red-eyed as ever, the Devil drums his talons along his jawline. His eyebrows, two caterpillars, crawl up to his hairline, and he _smiles_.

Tyler glances at the door. It closes with a slam.

The Devil laughs.

Tyler feels as light as air.

*

Some of the fans ask about Tyler's eyes.

_Why are they so red?_

Some of the fans ask about Tyler's ring.

_Where is it?_

Tyler applies burn cream to his knuckles every night. He wants to keep on his ring, not only because of the beauty of it, but the status it brings himself, Josh—the band, too. They were the model dynamic in the eyes of the music industry: perfect co-workers, perfect friends, perfect lovers. Removing this indication of their relationship, even if it's something as small and simple as a ring, shouldn't erase that.

The way Josh watches him from the bed as he plucks off the ring to rub his first-degree burns, Tyler can't help but believe Josh is harboring some resentment. He knows Josh, and he knows Josh wouldn't be someone to follow that line of thinking. He only hopes Josh thinks the same of him.

One night, Tyler climbs into bed and says to Josh, "I think wearing matching pink ties is the right way to go."

Lowering his phone, Josh turns his head to look at Tyler, studying him with that thin smile and narrowed eyes. His face relaxes after realizing Tyler's statement is, and never will be, regarded as a joke.

" _Oh_. I… I didn't think you'd—"

"You didn't think I'd still want to get married?"

"I didn't say that."

"No, but you were implying it." Tyler's frown sends sharp jolts of pain down his neck, where the ends of his mouth nearly reach. "Before, you told me you wanted me to stand by myself at the altar without crutches—and I haven't needed crutches in _a while_ , Josh. I—Josh, I'm okay." The laugh Tyler means to be self-serving trips from his mouth and forces his chin to quiver. " _Jesus_ , Josh, I'm _okay_."

"Why don't you wear your ring?"

Tyler's fingers curl. "Josh—"

"If it doesn't fit anymore, I can go get it resized—but if you don't wanna wear it anymore—" Josh doesn't finish, and Tyler doesn't bother to interrupt him this time. He stares at Josh, and Josh, albeit with much glancing away, stares at Tyler right back. Then, taking in a shaky breath, he lays his hand on top of Tyler's. "I don't know why we're—we shouldn't be fighting. Why are we fighting? We never fight."

"I like pushing your buttons," Tyler whispers, watching Josh lift his hand to inspect the burns along his knuckles. In the dark room, only their phones serving as lights, Tyler wouldn't be able to detect the burns, but Josh knows exactly where to avoid kissing.

"Will you _please_ tell me if things get hard? I have told you I don't mind that you isolate yourself—and I understand why you do it, but, _Tyler_ "—Josh kisses each of the calluses on Tyler's fingertips—"I'm really gonna need you to let me know if things get _bad_."

"I will," Tyler says. "I will, Josh."

*

Tyler's head starts to hurt again.

*

Back to his old routine, Tyler bookends his days with the woods and the basement. In the woods, he sits and reads all he can about traumatic brain injuries and if it's possible to recover from them. From what he gathers, recovery is possible, but not to the extent of his own recovery; there should be traces of the injury left behind, maybe in the way he speaks or in the way he sings—he speaks, and he sings, and nothing is wrong or broken about his voice.

He's scared to show Josh this, fearing Josh will mention his path to recovery again, how he shouldn't be doing this, how he needs to focus on himself and get better.

This is how Tyler gets better. This is how he gets better.

He lies on that bench in the middle of the woods, beneath that wilting willow tree and wrapped in layers of warm clothing, and sings so softly, so loudly. He sings and sings and sings, and as he lies there below the sun crawling across the sky, he thinks that—maybe, _maybe_ —he isn't actually getting better.

If he were getting better, he shouldn't still be seeing the Devil around every corner of his house, next to him in the basement, or crouching by the bench, peering at him over the layers of clothing clinging to his bicep.

And in the basement, Tyler records videos of himself singing. When he plays them back, the Devil is nowhere in the frame, despite perching himself on the stairs, which are clearly seen in the video. Regardless, Tyler believes the Devil is there in the video—in his voice, twisting around his teeth and his tongue, hitting the microphone of his phone to translate into something akin to hymns. He only sings the band's songs, but they reflect biblical; no, not biblical—not quite, but adjacent.

*

Weeks pass like this, Tyler thinks—him in the woods, in the basement; playing perfect music with hands he doesn't control, singing with a perfect voice he doesn't control.

He believes he has gained the ability to levitate.

He discovers this as he's singing, coincidentally, in the woods. The Devil decides to touch him that afternoon instead of his usual staring contest, and when those claws grip Tyler's arm, Tyler jumps. He feels himself lingering in the air before settling back down to the bench.

He tests this out later that night in the basement, while singing, playing an instrument, and doing nothing. Despite levitating during all three tasks, he's able to hang in the air longer if he's singing, then if he's playing an instrument. He can only maintain his time in the air for a handful of seconds while not occupying his mind.

With his ukulele in his arms, he gains more height, probably due to the ukulele being the Devil's instrument of choice. With the keyboard he keeps down in the basement, he learns he falls _fast_ if his fingers leave the keys. He records a video of himself playing the bridge to "Ride"; he floats high, like he's holding himself up by his fingertips, his feet skimming the ceiling.

He worries about falling. He lands on his feet every time.

This latest video, he sends it to Josh.

Within seconds, Tyler hears his footsteps thud throughout the house comically fast, even detecting the tell-tale signs of him running into the corners of walls and furniture. Tyler is standing in front of his keyboard, phone in hand, when Josh skids over to him. "Hey," Josh says, and he sounds so _calm_ , so… elated to be down here with Tyler—a reaction Tyler hadn't expected. When it comes down to it, Tyler doesn't know how he expected Josh to react—in anger, fright?

"Hey," Tyler says.

"How'd you _do_ that?"

"Are you gonna be mad at me if I show you?"

Josh opens his mouth to respond, and Tyler shakes his head. "Never mind. Just—sit over there." He points at the stairs. "You, you… you have to promise me you won't get near me if anything funny happens."

From his place on the bottom step, Josh hugs his knees and promises Tyler he won't touch him.

Sitting a few steps above Josh, the Devil props up his chin with his laced fingers. His eyes glow in the dark.

Setting down his phone on his desk, Tyler approaches his keyboard. He takes his seat, places his hands on the keys. Already, he feels the heat rising from his piano, coiling around his fingers, his wrists, his forearms. It looks black, like ink and oil and blood.

Tyler glances at Josh. He wets his lips. "You are surrounding… all my surroundings… sounding down the mountain range… of my left-side brain…"

It doesn't take long before Tyler's rising from his seat, and it doesn't take long before Josh is breaking his promise to interfere. His fingertips glued to the keyboard, his feet skimming the ceiling, his hoodie fluttering along the bottom of his ribcage, Tyler continues to sing, continues to play—and when Josh touches him, Tyler lets go of the keys and continues to hang in the air. It's because he's singing. It's because Josh is rising from the floor, too, and joining Tyler in the air.

Shaking and intertwining their hands, Tyler clings to Josh. He knows Josh will hurt himself if he falls, so he keeps singing in a quiet, strong voice that shakes his Amiibos and reverberates all the way throughout the house—and he sings, sings, sings— _entertain my faith, entertain my faith, entertain my faith…_

Looking into Josh's eyes, Tyler finds nothing but darkness. Pupils huge and black—they take up so much space Tyler worries they'll contaminate the whites of his eyes. But Josh, he blinks, shakes his head, and his eyes return to normal once Tyler finishes his song and slowly lowers to the ground. He comes down first, then Josh, and once they're both safe and sound, four feet on the floor, Josh utters, "What the _fuck_?"

Tyler looks at the stairs. The Devil bats his eyelashes and tilts his head.

"Yeah, I wish I could explain, but—"

"Your _voice_ , Tyler—I know you're _good_ , but I didn't know you'd be—dude, _babe_ , have you been doing vocal exercises down here? You sound _so_ good."

Tyler blinks. "What?"

"Your singing," Josh says. "You're amazing."

"What about me playing the piano?"

"All you did was sing for me. I mean, that's all I noticed." Josh frowns. "Wait, did you do a different melody or something? I'm sorry for not realizing. It's just— _your voice_."

Tyler scans Josh. He slowly nods his head. "Yeah. I've been doing vocal exercises down here."

And Josh hugs him.

And the Devil laughs.

*

Just before he goes up to bed, Tyler uploads the video of him floating to Twitter. He waits for the responses to see if anybody sees the _obvious_.

Like Josh, the fans notice his voice and nothing else. Those tweets take up Tyler's notifications, expressing how powerful it's transformed, how ethereal, how _haunting_.

_i swear i couldn't move when he started singing_

_it's like God was like "don't worry, i got you" and amped up his voice as some kind of repayment_

_He sounds like a siren._

_And he had us believing he was gonna quit music? Bitch lmao_

It would have been a cheap shot, but not a single fan—that Tyler can see—makes a "Levitate" joke.

And just before he goes up to bed, Tyler wanders through the streets of his neighborhood, seeking out strangers who don't recognize him. He coaxes them into alleyways and sings to them, watches them immobilize and shed tears as easily as sweat. He teaches himself to hold back, to allow the strangers to move, and they fall to their knees before him and kiss the ground he walks upon.

Sometimes, he sings them lullabies he remembers in his mother's voice. Sometimes, he does sing in his mother's voice.

Always, they fall asleep, fall right to the ground, against a wall, in a nearby chair.

And always, the Devil is with him, laughing.

And always, Tyler's head feels like it might _burst_.

"Please," Tyler says, the first time he has directly spoken to the Devil since the Devil fixed him. "Why are they acting like that? What are you doing to them?"

" _Nothing_ ," the Devil says. " _It's nothing_."

In bed, Josh snoring next to him and the Devil perching on his chest, Tyler asks him, "Am I going crazy?"

" _Open your fucking mouth_ ," the Devil says, " _and sing me a song_."

Tyler places his hands over his eyes.

The Devil grabs Tyler's hands and pries them away from his face. " _Tell me_ ," he whispers, " _do you believe you've sacrificed enough yet?"_

Tyler lets the Devil take his face because this is not the first time he has done so, and Tyler has grown to tolerate those warm hands against his skin, has even grown to _enjoy_ those claws scratching at the nape of his neck, those full lips kissing his temple.

"I'm _tired_ ," Tyler sighs. "Please, please—I don't want your voice anymore."

" _I didn't give you_ my _voice,_ " the Devil hisses." _I dug it out from your vocal cords with tooth and nail and rewired it myself._ " He wraps his fingers around Tyler's neck and _squeezes_." _And don't you fucking forget it._ "

*

Tyler debates on keeping his mouth shut. He wonders if he'll be able to go the rest of his life without talking. He can communicate through touch. Josh would be able to understand him.

He manages to go three days without speaking, under the guise of resting his voice, which Josh understands wholeheartedly. For the most part, it plays out well. Josh _does_ understand him.

However, on the night of the third day of his silence, Tyler heaves into the toilet, his ribs constricting around his lungs and nearly crushing them. He fights to keep his eyes open, terrified of what might transpire if he were to close them. If he keeps them open, nothing bad will happen. Nothing will surprise him. He tells himself this and believes it entirely. He has nothing else.

Regardless, blood hits the toilet bowl.

Josh finds him like this. " _Oh_." He crouches and rubs Tyler's back. "Get it all out," he mumbles, and Tyler knows the blood is another aspect of the Devil's trickery that Josh won't be able to see.

"Is your head hurting at all?" Josh checks Tyler's forehead for a temperature.

Tyler shakes his head—a lie. It's killing him; small sparks of bright colors _pop_ behind his eyelids, erupting volcanoes full of ash and acid that tarnishes any chances of him into maintaining his silence. The mere thought sends him headfirst into the toilet again.

Blood seeps from his lips, iron and hot and leaving his body not so much shivering but convulsing. He grips the toilet, hangs on until the final cough rakes through his body and escapes in a screech that peels Josh's hand from his back.

"Look at me," he pleads, spinning on the balls of his feet to grab the front of Josh's shirt—baggy, without sleeves, something about aliens. Tyler has to twist his fingers in the fabric to pull Josh in close. He ends up sliding himself over to Josh, the socks on his feet easy against the floor while Josh, stoic, remains a few inches away.

"What are you talking about, Tyler?" Josh places his hands on Tyler's face, his cheeks. "I can see you. You're right here."

"No— _look_ at me. I need you to really look at me."

" _I am._ "

"Josh, _please_. You have to see that something is wrong with me. You wanted me to tell you when things get bad. _Things are bad_."

And for a second, Tyler thinks Josh believes him, but Josh's lips form an apology, and Tyler yanks on his shirt, bashes their foreheads together, and shouts in his face, " _Please see me_."

Tyler can tell something snaps in Josh. Not only do his pupils dilate, his cheeks flush, and he begins to tremble—full-body shakes that force Josh to grab Tyler, like Tyler's the one here holding the other steady. He chokes, too, struggling to speak, and Tyler ends up smacking Josh's cheeks when he tries to bring Josh's gaze up to him; it had started to drift over to the toilet, where Tyler thinks Josh is now able to see the blood inside.

"Josh," he says, and Josh snatches toilet paper from the roll. He presses the wad to Tyler's mouth. He's crying, whispering to himself, "You're _bleeding_."

"Yeah."

"Tyler, I—I don't know what—Tyler—"

With his hands still on Josh's face, Tyler pulls Josh toward him, bending Josh's focus to him— _his voice_. "Tell me what you see. I wanted you to see. Talk to me. Please, Josh—"

" _There's so much blood_."

Tyler hugs Josh, and Josh hesitates, but he hugs Tyler, too. In between all the shaking and stammering, he cups the back of Tyler's head and breathes into his neck. "What can I do?" Josh asks. "Is there anything I can do?"

He doesn't mention a doctor, which Tyler considers strange. He's always rushing to send Tyler to a doctor, the hospital, anywhere to get his head checked. Maybe it's not an option to Josh now, not since Tyler didn't explicitly request it. What had he said? _See me_.

"Hold me," Tyler says.

So, Josh does. He does. They lie on the bathroom floor, curled up on the fuzzy navy-blue bathmat, arms wound tight around each other.

Tyler's head doesn't hurt.

*

In the morning, Josh pushes Tyler toward the bath. "I bet you'll feel better afterward."

There isn't a point in arguing—Josh helps Tyler stand without Tyler requesting for it. Josh's hands are sturdy, his fingertips unwavering on Tyler's waist. "We'll have an easy day, okay? You need to rest." Twisting the knobs on the tub, Josh turns his head toward Tyler. Up and down, his eyes travel, finally settling on Tyler's face. "Your eyes are still red."

The bath fills quickly. Tyler watches the water ricochet around the tub's wide basin.

"Get in, okay?" Josh says. "I'll change the bed sheets and everything, and then I'll join you." He points at Tyler. "Do you want bubbles? A bath bomb?"

Tyler shakes his head.

Josh presses a wet kiss to Tyler's forehead on the way into the bedroom.

Avoiding his reflection, Tyler undresses.

In the water, he grows heavier than he does while lying down for bed—so heavy he thinks he's about to sink straight through the bottom of the tub—until Josh appears behind him.

Josh cups water into his hands and dumps it over Tyler's head. He proceeds to do it three more times before he passes his hands along the crown of Tyler's head. Marveling at the soothing gesture of the pads of Josh's fingers scrubbing his scalp, Tyler tilts his chin up to the ceiling.

For tour, Tyler and Josh both planned on growing out their hair from the buzzcuts they gave each other. While Josh's hair continues to grow and flourish with the aid of products, Tyler's hair lags behind by a handful of inches. Having surgery to fix a broken skull does that, and Tyler accepted this. He wants nothing more than to have Josh play with his hair again.

Now, though, Josh taps his fingers down the length of Tyler's spine. Tyler, ever the considerate man, leans forward to provide Josh with a longer canvas. This doesn't stop Josh from continuing his tapping underwater—and farther down than what could safely be considered Tyler's spine.

Tyler closes his eyes and wraps his fingers around his neck.

"We'll get all this figured out," Josh asserts, Tyler feeling Josh's nod overtake his whole body in one greasy affirmative gesture.

"What if I don't want it figured out?"

"What do you mean?"

Tyler rubs his forehead, right on those two knots at his hairline. Their presence hasn't bothered him since the day he obtained them. Whenever he does get headaches, the pain doesn't quite radiate from those knots—more like between them, right at the center of his forehead and spreading through his body as slow as molasses.

"It's okay," Josh says. "I understand why you're frustrated."

Tyler looks down at his hands. Blood dots his fingertips.

"I know it's hard, but try not to get all worked up. Focus on the now," Josh suggests. "Don't think about anything else."

Dunking his hands between his knees, Tyler shuts his eyes.

And he gets swept underwater by two clawed hands interlocking their and Tyler's fingers and _tugging._

He sinks straight down to the bottom—and farther than that; he's being pulled down the drain, through a weak section in the tub that's exactly the shape of his body. For a second, he believes he catches himself, that his scramble along the tub's walls has saved him, but those hands dig into his ankles—and he tries grabbing Josh's feet, Josh's toes—and everything is slimy to the touch.

As soon as he finds purchase on anything of substance, a sharp, stabbing pain enters right behind his eyes.

He has to let go.

Down into the darkness he plunges. His body folds into the fetal position. Eyes open, he begins to twist around, for the Devil grabs hold of his neck with ink-black hands. He snarls in Tyler's face with teeth crooked and sharp.

If Josh is talking to him, Tyler can't hear. He remains underwater, lungs straining. He turns his head this way and that, wills the water to be gentle with him. _Please_ , he thinks, and he spins and spins and wonders if it's the water alleviating the pain in his head or the lack of oxygen.

Or is it the Devil smiling so bright?

Tyler presses his hands to that mouth and pushes with all his might.

Red eyes glowing like headlights, the Devil laughs. The Devil speaks as air bubbles float to the surface. " _You're still so strong, even at your weakest point. That's admirable._ "

Fingers curling, Tyler plunges his hands down the Devil's throat and finds a home in the tongue and the tonsils and the—

" _You're telling me you want to be seen? D'ya even_ know _what that means, kid?_ "

Agonizing pain rips through Tyler, splitting him in two. He has to squeeze the sides of his head to keep everything together. He's scared he's going to fall apart. He's scared he's—

" _You want to be seen? I'll show you what it means to be_ seen _when you've called upon the likes of_ me _to mend what isn't broken._ "

"But I _am_ broken," Tyler screams, and feels his chest sink farther than the rest of his body. "Do _you_ know what I mean?"

Smoke appears to shoot straight through the Devil's nostrils, thick jets of steam that scald Tyler's hands, when he raises them to protect his face. This gesture is fruitless. The Devil still moves around his hands and attacks him, pinches the two knots at the top of his head, and wraps the pain leaking from those knots around his dark forearms.

And then, the Devil grins, kicks, and flies from the bath water.

A familiar tether, the pain is a residual familiarity—two marionette strings guiding Tyler where to go, and he goes up, up, up—then stops.

All Tyler knows—and knows well—is the pain has become controlled, erupting at those knots on his head until it's difficult to keep his head raised.

However, underwater, it's easy to do so, if he so wanted.

Underwater, Tyler discovers he never wants to come up for air.

Because underwater, he has never felt this free.

And yet, he still floats to the light.

He surfaces slowly, the top of his head first. The tips of his ears follow, the chilled air in the bathroom stinging his skin.

When he's able to see, Josh is the first face he registers. He blinks a few times to remove any water droplets from his eyelashes and studies Josh's own eyes.

Josh looks at him with an open mouth, his hands coming to hide that mouth.

Tyler rises from the water.

He's standing on his knees in the tub, and his head, it's still heavy. It hurts, too, still, but the pain is _longer_. The pain is _cold_.

The warm lights overhead cast shadows along the bathroom.

Tyler recognizes the two great points extending from his shadow, reflecting on the water's surface, right from his head. The shadow is tall, slightly curved and rigid. When Tyler tilts his head, his shadow follows the motion, and so do those two great points originating from his skull.

He has grown a pair of horns.

With trembling hands, he feels along these two new bones and squeezes at the base with all his might.

Only now does he allow himself to cry.

"Josh," he says, and he says, " _Josh_."

It begins to thunderstorm outside.

*

In their room, Tyler sits on the bed in clean, dry clothes with a towel wrapped around his shoulders.

Josh stands in the middle of the room, another towel in his hands if Tyler expresses need for it. Tears line his cheeks. He makes no sounds.

"Tell me again," Tyler says. "What did you see?"

Throwing his hands in the air, Josh slings his towel over a shoulder. "You were sleeping, I think? I dunno. I was falling asleep, too, and then you weren't in my arms—and you weren't in the tub anywhere. I tried feeling around for you and couldn't—I kept hearing you talk, but—"

"What was I saying?"

"I don't know. I don't know." Josh sits next to Tyler, now wringing that towel around in his hands. "Like, you were _gone_ , and right as I'm about to get out and call Mark or something, you show back up—and you… you have _horns_."

Covering his face with the towel, Josh repeats himself, like he can't believe what's right beside him. "You _grew horns_."

Without taking in a breath, Josh jumps up from the bed and grabs Tyler's horns. His grip is strong, damp, and Tyler looks up at Josh, begins to shake his head, but Josh is unyielding. He doesn't let up; he braces himself and says, "They have to come off, _right_? They gotta come off."

"No, Josh," Tyler tries. "I, I don't think—"

Josh gives a slow pull, and the horns pop off Tyler's forehead in a wet, squelching burp.

"There," he says. "All better."

The two bones look magnificent in Josh's fist—trophies deserving to be mounted, but Josh drops them on the floor, and they shatter as if they were made of glass.

Tyler touches his forehead and feels along his skin. No holes, no knots—all is seemingly well.

"Go to bed," Josh tells him, and Tyler wastes no time in doing so.

*

He doesn't dream, doesn't feel refreshed. He navigates to the bathroom as soon as he wakes, churning and punching in his gut. Unceremoniously, he falls to his knees, his hands slapping the floor, and he vomits— _no blood_. He feels his back arch like a cat's.

It hurts to breathe. He worries his ribs have broken again.

Tyler stumbles to the sink after he flushes the toilet, his hands slapping every surface he touches here, too—first the floor, then the sink, the counter, the faucet. He bends his head to catch water in his mouth. He spits. He drinks. He swallows. He spits.

He stares at his reflection.

Two holes gape and bleed on his forehead at the emergence of newborn horns, still tender and as black as night.

He turns off the light and goes back to bed.

*

Tyler's back in the bathroom within minutes, his vision blurring from the blood that rolled down in great beads to pool along his nose bridge as he attempted sleep. He should have known he'd start bleeding. He should have known it wasn't a bad dream, not when the blood and the horns line up with everything else happening in his life now—the Devil had him believing it was all in his head, somehow, with the exception of his miraculous brain injury recovery, which is backed up by x-rays, to the point Tyler truly believed he lost his mind. He wonders what would happen if he were to record a video of himself pleading for the public to _see_ him like he asked of Josh—would they finally be able to see him float in that video of him playing the piano? Would they be able to see his horns? Could only Josh see them?

Tyler grabs a washcloth from the linen closet and cleans himself of all the blood.

In the bedroom, Josh still fast asleep, Tyler grabs his phone and returns to the bathroom. Sliding down the door, Tyler sits on the floor and tries to start a video call with Mark. He can't call his mom or his siblings; he doesn't want to worry them. Let them continue to believe he's unwell and spiraling down; it wasn't like they would view him any differently.

Despite the late hour, Mark answers. He has on his gaming headset, and he's backlit with a screen giving off unhealthy blue light. Mark sees nothing wrong with his surroundings, and for a moment, he appears not to see anything wrong with Tyler either. He tells him, "About time you fucking called me, asshole."

"Sorry," Tyler says. He has his phone hiding his forehead at first, but he angles up his screen and allows the view to capture his horns, which have grown since the last time Tyler has seen them. They're about two inches tall now, stick-straight, and aiming to grow like that the rest of the way. They're leaking blood and smell of it, too. The glow of Tyler's phone screen only shines them in a black-night light.

Mark says, "Whoa, those are badass. They look awesome with the red contacts. Did you get them somewhere?"

"Sorta."

"Thinking about adding costumes for the next leg of tour? Josh told me you wanted to get on the road soon. We could totally do costumes, if that's what you have in mind. You think the bishops should have them, too, when they remove their hoods or something?" Mark whistles. "That would be _so cool_. It'd really nail in that 'place without God' theme you were going for."

Tyler closes his eyes.

Mark says, "What are those? Prosthetics? Does Josh have a pair? They look so good."

Tyler ends the call and sails his phone far, far away from him, across the room, into the bathtub, where the screen shatters into a shower of glass he wishes would splinter his skin.

Then, pivoting onto his hands and knees, Tyler pounds his forehead into the floor. Some kind of tile, the floor is stronger than the wall, which is where he had his eyes set on. Not desiring to explain a hole in the wall to Josh, Tyler knocks his forehead into the bathroom floor until he feels the smallest crack echo throughout his body. It vibrates. It smells like ash.

Raising his head, Tyler grips the sink and heaves himself to his feet. He's dizzy, vision a little blurry, and he watches his fuzzy reflection sway for a minute, before everything returns right again. He wishes it didn't. He wishes all this would go away.

Blood drips into the sink. He's missing a horn. Looking behind him and touching the sore open wound at his hairline, Tyler doesn't find any trace of the missing horn. He wonders if this is it, if he needs to bash his head right back into the floor to make the other horn pop off, too.

Right before his eyes, the remaining horn falls right off into the sink's basin, clings around the porcelain—so delicate and so dainty—only to disappear just as readily as his first pair of horns.

Squinting into the darkness of his wounds, he discovers a resurgence of bone buried deep.

He would have traded anything in order to play his instruments and sing again. He had forgotten what music sounded like, and now he wielded a heavy pair of horns. This is what he wanted. He wanted to be fixed. He should have known this wouldn't be without consequence. The Devil told him that. Why didn't he _listen_?

If there's one attribute he can still find in himself to like, it's how he never forgets to give Josh's forehead a kiss before leaving the house. This time, Josh stirs, whispers for Tyler. It's nonsensical. It's followed by a snore.

Tyler kisses Josh's nose and lingers for as long as he can.

*

Darkness waits for him. Quiet and somber, the night bends across the horizon. There is no person out here, nor animal, save for Tyler, who steps along the porch until his toes mold around the topmost step.

There is no rain. The thunderstorm hours before has left the area, yet he hears it begin to rain again, coming in waves that clash and cling against their roof as if their roof were made of tin. Tyler looks over his shoulder, up to their roof, and finds nothing that could produce that noise—no clouds in the night sky, just the moon peeking behind half-lidded eyes. He thinks the raindrops will disappear now that he stands out here, but it continues in those waves, stretching across the lawn and hiding out in the woods behind the house.

Tyler takes a step down, then takes another step down, and then another.

Dew wets the grass, oozes between his toes with the chipped nail polish. He doesn't wait for the dew to dry. He walks toward the woods, toward that sound radiating through the trees—the sound that curses his mind and all the seemingly unbroken bits. He knows he's hearing music.

He wishes he grabbed warmer clothes.

No campfire for the night, the Devil sits on that bench beneath the wilting willow tree, playing his golden ukulele and humming in the voice Tyler recognizes as his own. In the moonlight, the Devil's horns deliver long tentacles for shadows that tangle themselves around Tyler's feet when he enters the clearing. Lowering his head, Tyler notices his own horns have grown back. They press against his temples and curve around his ears—a goat's horns. As he concentrates on these areas, he registers the throbbing and the small beads of blood that weep at his skin's continuous torture.

He falls to his knees in front of that bench, in front of the Devil, and he places his palms upon the Devil's bare knees and bows his head low to the ground. He has never felt weaker or more powerless than he does right now. His throat is so sore, and his limbs—he knows he cannot levitate any longer. All manifestations of the Devil's power rushed to the anomalies that sprouted from his forehead at a finger snap once Tyler used his voice on Josh.

"Please," Tyler says to the Devil. "I'll do anything. Take them."

" _Why would I do that?_ " the Devil inquires, tapping his foot to the beat of his ukulele. " _I consider them an improvement._ "

And the Devil, his hands pausing on the ukulele, reaches into the tight space between him and Tyler to curl his fingers around Tyler's chin. " _Poor boy_ ," he mumbles, not an ounce of sarcasm in the soft edges of his face. His voice is deep, but it doesn't irritate Tyler's ears, like it so often used to do. Now, it soothes Tyler, nearly lulls him to sleep—and he supposes that's the point of it all, trying to imitate empathy in an attempt to garner trust.

This isn't imitation. This is genuine. The Devil's eyes are red and wet.

" _Appreciate the broken. Appreciate what isn't broken, too._ " The Devil pauses. He adds, " _Appreciate the parts of yourself you don't deem valuable._ "

Tyler's crying along with the Devil, squeezing his knees and pushing himself up into the Devil's personal space. Forehead to forehead, horns against horns, Tyler grinds his horns into the Devil's own and urges, "You made me a _monster_."

The Devil abandons his ukulele, lets it clatter to the forest floor, and loops his arms around Tyler's shoulders in a shattering hug that sends them both to the dirt. " _Poor boy, poor boy_ ," the Devil whispers into Tyler's ear as Tyler shudders through his sorrow. " _You were already a monster_."

His song fades into the night.

*

At daybreak, Tyler turns onto his back and looks up at Josh. Between the autumn leaves, the sun cushions Josh's head and dares to harm Tyler's eyes, but this sight is a welcome one, and Tyler welcomes the burn. It spreads, centers in his fingers, where he sees Josh holding them, gripping them so tightly his knuckles are white. Tyler's ring, the finicky thing, shines despite it all.

"There you are," Josh sighs, and Tyler wants to kiss every freckle on his face. So, he does. Of course, he does. And Josh returns the kisses to Tyler's cheeks, his neck. With his mouth against Tyler's, he says, "Sing something for me, Mr. Pilot."

And after Tyler sings for him, Josh opens his eyes. It's as if nothing has changed.


End file.
